On Aug. 25, 2022, the Middle East Institute (MEI), the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the International Crisis Group (ICG), Century International, and the U.S. / Middle East Project (USMEP) co-convened a discussion with representatives from leading Palestinian civil society organizations entitled Israeli Raids on Palestinian Civil Society Organizations — The Costs of International Inaction.
The event speakers and panelists included:
- Shawan Jabaran, General Director, Al Haq
- Sahar Francis, General Director, Addameer
- Ubai Abboud, Executive Director, Bisan Center
- Moayyad Bsharat, Project Manager, Union of Agricultural Work Committees
- Tahreer Jaber, Executive Director, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees
- Khaled Quzmar, General Director, Defense for Children International—Palestine
- Khaled Elgindy, Senior Fellow and Director, MEI
- Lara Friedman, President, FMEP
- Zaha Hassan, Middle East Program Fellow, CEIP
- and Raed Jarrar, Director of Advocacy, DAWN
The ensuing conversation focused on the impacts of the Israeli government’s ongoing campaign to criminalize, silence, and ultimately restrict and close down Palestinian human rights and humanitarian organizations, and on the consequences of inaction from the international community. Panelists and speakers discussed the United States’ dangerous choice to open the door for Israel to provide “further evidence” on the six Palestinian civil society organizations (CSOs) originally designated as “terrorist groups” by Israel in October 2021, and recently ratified by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, despite both the CIA and the State Department finding the evidence Israel has provided thus far entirely uncompelling. Given that Israel’s “evidence” thus far has relied on unsubstantiated and coerced testimony, this openness to further evidence is effectively an invitation for Israel to continue cracking down on civil society while it works to manufacture more circumstantial evidence. This aligns with longstanding U.S. foreign policy that enables and emboldens Israel to repress Palestinian civl society without accountability and with impunity.
The panelists spoke at length on the experiences of their organizations and themselves as targets of Israel’s campaign to dismantle Palestinian civil society; from the impacts on their daily lives, to the impacts on their work, to the impacts on the populations they serve. This included discussions of Israel’s August 18 actions in which “the Israeli military raided the offices of [seven] prominent Palestinian civil society organizations, destroying property, seizing files and office equipment, and welding the entrances to the offices shut.” The discussion then turned to the international response—or lack thereof—highlighting the inadequacy of merely rejecting Israel’s allegations against the seven organizations recently raided and closed by the Israeli government, and calling for concrete actions to hold Israel accountable.
A common theme across all of representatives of the designated organizations was a refusal—even in the face of ongoing threats against their freedom and their families—to allow Israel’s actions to silence them or stand in the way of their work. As Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq put it, “We will not be afraid… Working in human rights is not a job, it’s a faith and a belief… We will not give up, we will not step back.” The Charity & Security Network (CSN) supports Palestinian and all CSO’s fundamental freedoms and promotes an enabling environment to operate free from fear and restriction.