[News] Organizations Demand Concrete Action to Revoke Israel's Sinister Designation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

addameer.org <https://www.addameer.org/news/4748>
The Six Palestinian Civil Society Organizations Demand Concrete Action to
Revoke Israel's Sinister Designation
April 6, 2022
------------------------------

The Six prominent Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations
<https://palcivilsociety.com/> welcomed the meeting organized by the Carter
Center in Ramallah today, and emphasized on its importance to show
solidarity and support to civil society and human rights in Palestine.
Panelists during the press conference
<https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1017904845824192>
included Ms. Paige Alexander, Chief Executive Officer of the Carter Center,
Advocate Sahar Francis, the General Director of Addameer Prisoner Support
and Human Rights Association, and Mr. Shawan Jabarin, the General Director
of Al-Haq. Ms. Alexander highlighted the importance of civil society for
the protection of human rights and stressed that Israel's acts such as the
designation makes it harder for civil society to carry out their vital
work, and called on the International community to continue to pressure
Israel to rescind the designation against the six Palestinian
organizations.

Our joint statement distributed during the press conference reads as
follows:

Over five months have passed since the Israeli occupation’s blanket
criminalization of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society
organizations (CSOs) in <https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/19179.html>a
military order <https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/19179.html> published on 3
November 2021, two weeks after their
<https://www.addameer.org/news/4541>arbitrary
designation <https://www.addameer.org/news/4541> by Israel’s “Defense”
Minister as “terror organizations” on 19 October 2021. This unprecedented
and sinister move has been widely denounced by
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/22/israel/palestine-designation-palestinian-rights-groups-terrorists>international
human rights organizations
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/22/israel/palestine-designation-palestinian-rights-groups-terrorists>
and
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27702&LangID=E>UN
bodies
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27702&LangID=E>
as a “frontal attack on the Palestinian human rights movement, and on human
rights everywhere.” State parties, including the EU, have similarly
denounced the move, though in regrettably weaker terms without concrete
action.

The blanket criminalization represents an unprecedented escalation of
decades of the Israeli occupation’s systematic harassment campaigns against
the Palestinian CSOs and another step in the formalizing annexation
<https://docdro.id/KZzwauX> of the West Bank through the application of
Israeli law on Palestinian Organizations and entrenching the Israeli
control over Palestinian Society through the reengineering of Palestinian
Civic Space. The imminent consequences of the latest move are especially
grave, allowing Israeli occupation authorities to raid the organizations’
offices, seize all assets, arbitrarily arrest staff, and prohibit funding,
and/or even public support, for their activities.

Since then, our organizations, represented by Adalah Legal Center and the
offices of Attorney Michael Sfard and Attorney Jawad Boulous, have
undertaken formal procedures challenging the evidentiary basis of the
military order. On 16 November 2021, our legal team
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10504>sent a letter
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10504> to Israeli security
authorities demanding they reveal the entirety of the evidence forming the
basis of the designations, to which the Israeli Military Attorney
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10515>responded
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10515>, on 2 January 2021, that
“the core of the declarations is based on classified…information that
cannot be disclosed.” Thereafter, we filed a
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10544>procedural objection
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10544> against the military order,
noting the illegality of the declarations, the absence of due process, and
the lack of an evidentiary basis for the declaration.

The consequential negative impact of these designations has been acutely
felt by our organizations. Most importantly, they’ve hampered the critical
services we provide to those most marginalized and at-risk in Palestinian
communities including women, children, agricultural workers, and political
prisoners. Notwithstanding, the weak responses and recent actions of State
parties and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that prominently claim
to be supportive of democratic principles and human rights only exacerbate
the acute damaging consequences.

Three recent cases are worth noting: (1) the Dutch government's
<https://uawc-pal.org/Files/Funding2022.pdf>decision
<https://uawc-pal.org/Files/Funding2022.pdf> on 5 January 2022 to end its
funding for the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC); (2) the
European Commission’s extended and arbitrary
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/19424.html>funding suspension
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/19424.html> of one of Al-Haq’s and one of
UAWC’s projects funded by the European Union (EU); and (3) an Israeli
military judge at Ofer military court in the occupied West Bank sentenced
the President of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Khitam
Sa’afin, to 16 months imprisonment after nearly 15 months of arbitrary
detention.

The practice of withholding alleged “secret evidence” remains the modus
operandi of the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime. The latest
designations, however, mark a gross expansion of the practice in an attempt
to cripple any independent functioning Palestinian civil society. The
Israeli occupation’s criminalization of the six Palestinian organizations is
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-ngos-israel-designated-as-terror-groups-remain-legal-in-the-west-bank-1.10345231>explicitly
intended
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-ngos-israel-designated-as-terror-groups-remain-legal-in-the-west-bank-1.10345231>
to have secondary and tertiary consequences for the capacity of the human
rights and civil society organizations to continue their vital work,
especially their work in holding Israel accountable for its crimes and
international law violations committed against the Palestinian people.

It is regrettable that States, IGOs, and other actors have failed to move
beyond verbal denunciations of Israeli authorities’ criminalization of
Palestinian civil society; it is unacceptable that they instead take on
decisions that compound upon the persecution of the six Palestinian
organizations, without taking any concrete actions to hold the Israeli
occupation and apartheid regime accountable.

As such, we call on States, especially the US and Intergovernmental
Organizations, and the European States claiming to support the global
protection of human rights to:

   - Take concrete action against the Israeli occupation authorities’
   continued harassment and criminalization of Palestinian human rights
   defenders and civil society organizations; by calling for full revocation
   of the designation
   - States to publicly dismiss Israel’s designation of the six
   organizations
   - Immediately end the complicity and silence to the Israeli apartheid
   regime
   - Call on your State officials and relevant policymakers to meet with
   the six Palestinian organizations.

Further, we call on individuals of consciousness from around the world to
call attention to this blanket attack on Palestinian civil society and
human rights and to immediately and urgently contact their elected
officials and insist they hold Israeli authorities accountable and protect
human rights in Palestine.

Watch the recording of the press conference here.
<https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1017904845824192>
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