Al-Haq Statement on International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
Date: 29 November 2021
29 November, marks the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. On this day, we urge the international community to show its strong commitment to the protection of Palestinian inalienable rights and undertake effective measures to stand with Palestinian civil society under immense threat from Israel’s shrinking and elimination of Palestinian civil society space.
The United Nations chose 29 November to affirm support for the inalienable rights of Palestinians, in memory of the day that the General Assembly recommended the partition of Palestine in disregard of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, on 29 November 1947. The Partition Resolution paved the way for the mass expulsion of Palestinian refugees, for the ongoing brutal 54-year occupation of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and for decades of Israel’s settler-colonial and institutionalised regime of racial discrimination, amounting to apartheid. Israel continues to systematically violate, with impunity, international humanitarian and human rights of the Palestinian people.
Recently, Israel has advanced its project to expand settlements in the E1 area with more than 3,000 building units and pursued the ongoing forced displacement in Sheikh Jarrah. Israel’s continued denial of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return, the forcible transfer of the Palestinian people, dispossession of their land and natural resources, and denial of their right to self-determination amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court.
Israel’s Relentless Targeting of the Palestinian People and Civil Society
Over the past years, Israeli authorities have relentlessly targeted various pillars of Palestinian society, whether political actors, dissenting voices, or civil society organisations. In 2021, again, Israel attempted to impair and undermine the conduct of free, fair, and simultaneous national presidential, legislative, and Palestinian National Council elections, in violation of Palestinian inalienable right to self-determination and freedom of expression. The Israeli intelligence services targeted politically-engaged Palestinians; threatening to arrest them if any of them decided to run for elections, or to participate in any relevant activity. Using a different intimidation tactic, the Israeli occupying forces (IOF), accompanied by Israeli intelligence officers, further raided Palestinian homes and threatened potential candidates not to run for, or participate in, the Palestinian election process.
The last few months have been marked by a dramatic increase in the attacks targeting Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line. Notably, the Israeli authorities have stepped up their efforts to prevent civil society from conducting its human rights and accountability work, aimed at denouncing Israeli human rights violations and abuses and holding Israel accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity. The most cynical assault on independent civil society organisations has been their designation as “terror organisations” by the Israeli Minster of Defence on 19 October 2021, thus violating Palestinian inalienable human rights. Later, in November, Israel took alarming steps to execute and implement its designations. The designations are not only intended to effectively outlaw the organisations, placing them and their staff at risk of imminent reprisals, but also to cut off their funding and other forms of support from international partners and supporters. Palestinian civil society organisations have long been targeted by an Israeli Government-led smear campaign aimed at constructing a key narrative linking Palestinian human rights defenders with ‘terrorism,’ with the ultimate goal of delegitimizing, controlling, oppressing and silencing Palestinian human rights defenders.
Other Israeli attacks in the last months demonstrate how the Israeli authorities relentlessly pursue the campaign of persecution aimed at gradually normalizing its inhuman acts of persecution and apartheid towards Palestinian human rights defenders; from systematic harassment, defamation campaigns against Al-Haq and death threats against its staff members. On 7 July 2021, Ms. Shatha Odeh Abu Fannouneh, a human rights defender and the Director of the Health Work Committees (HWC), was forcibly and arbitrarily arrested by the Israeli Occupying Forces. Since then, she has been unlawfully detained and mistreated. On 18 October 2021, Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian-French human rights defender and a lawyer at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, was officially notified of the Israeli Minister of Interior’s decision to revoke his permanent Jerusalem residency for so-called “breach of allegiance” to the State of Israel. This revocation, which constitutes a direct act of forcible transfer and a grave breach of international law. As such, it constitutes an unwarranted and dangerous precedent which may see Israel escalate sweeping revocations of Jerusalem residencies premised on the unlawful application of its so-called “breach of allegiance” law.
Earlier this month, Front Line Defenders discovered through forensic investigation of devices belonging to human rights defenders of the 6 targeted organisations that 6 devices were infected with Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. The conclusion of the investigation was confirmed by Citizen Lab and Amnesty International’s Security Lab. In this context of a growingly shrinking space, it is more than ever time to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people and Palestinian civil society.
The Palestinian People’s Need for Solidarity and Justice
Solidarity with the Palestinian people is best manifested by the international community’s implementation of effective measures to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and its support to support the ICC in holding Israel accountable for its international crimes. After their designations as “terror organisations”, the targeted Palestinian organisations received broad support from all over the world: United Nations Special Rapporteurs and experts strongly condemned the Israeli designations, and numerous civil society organisations and public figures from all around the world stood by the targeted organisations. In this International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Al-Haq invites the international community to go further and calls for concrete political actions as support for the six targeted organisations and the Palestinian civil society as a whole.
Al-Haq welcomes political initiatives concretely supporting the Palestinian people, such as the H.R. 2590 bill, introduced in the US Congress by Betty McCollum. The bill aims at prohibiting Israel from using US funds on any support or assistance for Israel’s unilateral annexation of Palestinian territory in violation of international humanitarian law. Al-Haq also welcomes the motion adopted in the Dutch parliament, and the parliamentary petition in Canada, which can be supported here, along with initiatives started before the Catalonian, Italian and Brussels parliaments, and the supporting UK early day motion tabled on 25 October 2021.
As EU High Representative Josep Borrell has stated, “civil society organisations are a force in promoting international law, human rights, and democratic values, across the world and in Palestine”. Accordingly, Al-Haq calls the international community to demonstrate its commitment to the protection of Palestinian human rights and civil society and their inalienable right to pursue justice. In particular, Al-Haq calls US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and to:
- Affirm their commitment to the protection of Palestinian human rights and civil society and and their inalienable right to pursue accountability for Israeli human rights abuses, including via the International Criminal Court;
- Take concrete and affirmative measures demanding that Israel ends its use of illegal practices and policies of intimidation and harassment against Palestinian civil society and human rights defenders, which violates fundamental international human rights and humanitarian law;
- Act to end complicity and support for the Israeli military and it’s illegal practices and policies of intimidation, by cutting military funding and banning all forms of Israeli cyber surveillance technologies.
Join today a webinar with Head of Legal Research and Advocacy of Al-Haq, Dr. Susan Power:
How to Take Action to Express Solidarity
- Sign the petition: express your support for Palestinian civil society.
- Post your support using our hashtag #StandWithThe6: share why you support Palestinian civil society and the work of the 6 organizations on social media, your blog, or in op-eds and use our toolkit here.
- Amplify our work: follow us and sign up to our mailing lists.
- Contact your elected representatives: call, email, or visit policymakers in your region - and tell them to take concrete and affirmative measures demanding that Israel ends its use of illegal practices and policies of intimidation and harassment against Palestinian CSOs and human rights defenders.
- Organise a solidarity event: hold a protest, rally, or sit-in - outside of Israeli embassies or other strategic locations in your region.
What you can do as an organisation, in addition to the actions above:
- Issue a public statement of support for Palestinian civil society and human rights defenders and rejection of Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian people and civil society to delegitimize, eliminate, and smear their work.
- Engage with Palestinian civil society and don’t allow for them to be silenced due to Israeli pressure and persecution.
What you can do as a policy maker/politician/MPs:
- Take concrete and affirmative measures demanding that Israel ends its use of illegal practices and policies of intimidation and harassment against Palestinian CSOs and human rights defenders, starting with revoking its designation of the six Palestinian CSOs as “terrorist organisation”, revoke its Anti-Terrorism Law (2016) as it does not meet basic human rights standards. and halts its silencing efforts against any voice challenging and opposing its apartheid regime and prolonged occupation.
- Impose lawful, targeted and immediate sanctions until Israel ends its illegal military occupation and apartheid regime that is enshrined in Israel’s domestic law.