Israel escalates ‘political persecution’ of Palestinian NGOs with threat to attorneys

Israel has escalated its “political persecution” of six outlawed Palestinian human right groups by issuing threats to the attorneys representing their case in upcoming hearings. An Israeli Defence Ministry official has sent a letter to several of the lawyers representing the groups designated as “terrorist organisations” by the apartheid state, warning that they could face prosecution under Israel’s anti-terror laws.

It was an act of desperation by the settler-colonial state to proscribe Palestinian civil society organisations. According to +972 Magazine, the letter was sent on 14 July to Michael Sfard, who is representing Al-Haq; Avigdor Feldman, who represents the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and another attorney who represents one of the other six organisations outlawed by Defence Minister Benny Gantz in October last year. All three lawyers were warned that they may be in violation of Israel’s terror laws for collecting fees from the groups, and could face a severe penalty.

The lawyers have said that they informed the Defence Ministry ahead of time that they would be representing the groups and have pointed out that this is the first time that they have ever received such a notice. They view it as little more than an attempt to threaten them.

Opposing the Israeli position on the matter and suggesting that this latest assault on Palestine civil society is unprecedented, Sfard said that he has represented organisations that have been declared “terrorist organisations” for over a decade and has informed the Defence Ministry on every occasion. He pointed out the absurdity of a situation in which the same ministry that is behind the designation is now trying to bar the organisations in question from access to proper legal representation. The lawyer is reported as saying that the move gives the ministers the power to “steer the organisations in question to seek different representation, perhaps of the kind that would be more ‘convenient’ for the state.”

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The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah, which is representing three of the proscribed groups but did not receive the notice, called it, “A direct and natural continuation of the political persecution of the six Palestinian organisations, and an attempt to intimidate the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis who have expressed unreserved support for these organisations and the entire Palestinian people.”

Adalah argued further that, “This incident proves yet again that the belligerence and oppression of the Israeli regime knows no bounds, and that the persecution of human rights organisations and Palestinian civil society reveals that it is a dark and dangerous regime that the nations of the world must act to stop.”

Earlier this month the European Union struck a severe blow to Israel’s attempt to proscribe Palestinian civil society organisations by clearing all six groups of any links to terrorism and resuming its funding of them. Nine European countries have also expressed their refusal to stop cooperating with the Palestinian NGOs that the Israeli occupation designated as “terrorist organisations” in October, due to the lack of evidence in support of the allegation.

In a ruling last October that was met with near universal condemnation, Gantz outlawed the work of Addameer; Al-Haq; Defence for Children International-Palestine; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees; Busan Centre for Research and Development; and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees. Despite campaigning frantically to get its Western allies on board, European diplomats have maintained that Israel’s case for outlawing the six Palestinian human rights groups is weak.

Almost all Palestinian organisations in the occupied territories, including the PLO and Fatah, are deemed by Israel to be “terrorist organisations”. As is typical with authoritarian and racist regimes, Israel has sought for decades to criminalise the activity of civil society organisations run by persecuted groups in order to maintain and preserve what every major human rights group has not only called “Jewish supremacy” in occupied Palestine, but also labelled as apartheid.