HRC53: The silencing of civil society voices by Israel at the heart of the Commission of Inquiry’s report
The 53rd Session of the Human Rights Council
19 June–14 July 2023
Item 2 –Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General
20 June 2023
By Farah C. / GICJ
Executive Summary
In their third report, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (hereafter “the Commission”) examined attacks, restrictions and harassment of civil society actors by all duty bearers: Israel, the State of Palestine, and the de facto authorities in Gaza.
The Commission’s conclusions are unequivocal. Civil society space is dangerously shrinking, and Israel is getting bolder day by day, openly carrying out its colonial and occupation strategy.
In that regard, civil society is a major threat. Human rights defenders and every activist challenging Israeli authorities are considered an obstacle to the occupation project. They are threatened by death, arbitrary arrest and detention, administrative detention, harassment, smear campaigns and much more.
Despite defiantly disregarding basic international law provisions and resolutions, Israel seems to be granted a privileged position in the international community.
Accordingly, Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ) calls on States to finally take the right steps toward accountability. The international community must realise that Israeli authorities and those States protecting their violations are opening up the UN human rights mechanisms to ridicule, undermining their own credibility in speaking up about other human rights issues with provocative indifference. Without action, the international legal system’s legitimacy is endangered.
It is difficult for people to understand how the Human Rights council and other mechanisms are defending individual rights when countries, such as the United States of America, are closing their eyes to documented violations under sustainable excuses.
We therefore welcome efforts undertaken by the Commission and global civil society to highlight the precarious situation of civil society in Occupied Palestinian Territories in a comprehensive and evidence-based report, and fully support their future activities.
Background
The commission was established pursuant to the Human Rights Council resolution S-30/1, which was adopted on the 27th of May 2021, during the Special Session convened by the Human Rights Council after a series of violent episodes in Palestine.
Back in the beginning of 2021, tensions increased by the day across Palestine, particularly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Escalating tensions around East Jerusalem and Al Aqsa compound during the Holy month of Ramadan (April 2021) sparked fires, clashes and suppressive enforcement actions in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the other parts of Palestine, leading to a worldwide wave of protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people. These tensions unfortunately led to a deadly episode of bombings with Israel striking the Gaza Strip over 11 days. (10-21 May 2021) along with further limitations on the freedoms of individuals.
The Commission has the mission to “investigate all human rights violations leading up to and since 13 April 2021”. Its mandate covers investigation of the “underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity”.
In May 2022, the first report of the Commission identified "forced displacement, threats of forced displacement, demolitions, settlement construction and expansion, settler violence, and the blockade of Gaza as contributing factors to recurring cycles of violence".
The report recalls that Israel is an occupying power in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and Gaza. The occupation is a de facto situation and therefore must be temporary. This was legally established in Resolution 242 of the 22nd of November 1967, in which the Security Council called for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from “territories occupied in the recent conflict”. The history of the subsequent 55 years tells a different story.
Summary of the report
For its third report, the Commission focussed on “attacks, restrictions and harassment of civil society actors, by all duty bearers.”
The experts based their report on 127 interviews, testimonies given during two rounds of public hearings, research and discussions with stakeholders and experts along with 21 submissions received following a call for submissions. The report covers primarily the impact on civic space during the period 2020-2023.
Civic space is defined in the report as “the environment that enables different civil society actors, including the most excluded and marginalised, to participate meaningfully in the political, economic, social and cultural life of society”.
Delegitimisation of civil society by Israeli authorities
The Commission concluded that the delegitimisation of the civil society stems from an “intentional strategy” by the Government of Israel. The latter seeks to silence civil society and some of its main tools are criminalisation, pressure and threats, lobbying donors and the adoption of measures to cut organisations’ fundings.
The report mentioned as well the shrinking space felt by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the occupied territories, there was also an impact felt by CSOs in Europe and in the United States in relation to their criticism of Israeli authorities regarding human rights. Academics and public figures are particularly targeted and usually experience smear campaigns and lawsuits.
Legislation targeting civic space
The Commission shed light on laws that were passed by Israeli authorities and their harmful consequences in reducing civil society space. These include amendment No. 40 to the Budgets Foundations Law 2011, the 2011 ‘anti-boycott law’, the 2016 amendment to the Law of Associations, the 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law and amendment No. 28 of March 2017 to the law on entry into Israel.
The report particularly denounced the abusive use of counter-terrorism legislation to target CSOs and label them as “terrorist organisations''. A military order declared the following organisations unlawful and accused them of having links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), considered a terrorist group by Israeli authorities:
the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. Health Work Committees also learnt that it was declared unlawful when some of their members were arrested without notice.
Neither the organisations concerned, their lawyers nor the Commission received any tangible evidence supporting the Government’s claims. On each occasion, Israeli authorities justified these opaque decisions on the flimsy basis that certain pieces of evidence were held as part of a secret file.
The Commission highlighted that these organisations were previously subjected to multiple campaigns of threats, attempts to tarnish their reputation and funding cuts by Israeli authorities but also by sanctioned right-wing organisations operating with their acquiescence.
These designations directly affected the work of the organisations and the people they supported through their services and activities, including access to health, legal support, gender-based violence and food security.
Attacks and harassment
The Commission then shared the testimonies it collected concerning harassment suffered by human rights activists committed by Israeli authorities as well as by Israeli settlers.
The report highlights this alarming trend with the case of Issa Amro, a prominent Palestinian Human Rights Defender from Hebron, promoting peaceful protests against occupation. He has suffered for years from attacks by Israeli security forces and settlers including an attack in February 2023 when he was doing little more than talking to an American journalist on a public street.
The impunity granted to private settlers for their attacks on Palestinians is also denounced in the report. An emblematic case presented in the report is of a human rights defender in Masafer Yatta, attacked by settlers while he was farming his land. While they broke his two arms, he was still charged with attempted murder and attacking settlers, and thus spent 10 days in prison. He was released on condition to the payment of bail and couldn’t access his land for 30 days. This case is just one of many where evidence collected show the widespread impunity enjoyed by settlers and Israeli soldiers protecting them.
Punitive measures and restrictions under the occupation regime
The report stresses the role of the Israeli military court system as a key tool in restraining and criminalising civil society space in the OPT. Dozens of cases of prosecuted human rights defenders were documented by the Commission. The latter found violations like intimidation during interrogation, harassment and the use of plea bargains under duress to obtain convictions.
Due to the high number of these cases, the Commission suspects a systematic policy of targeting Palestinian human rights defenders and activists. In that regard, the Commission uses the concept of “lawfare” to name this particular strategy, namely using the law to justify its questionable military/security actions.
Administrative detentions are at the heart of the Israeli military court system. In administrative detention, a person is held without trial without having committed an offence, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future. As this measure is supposed to be preventive, it has no time limit.
The person is detained without legal proceedings, by order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them. This leaves the detainees helpless – facing unknown allegations with no way to disprove them, not knowing when they will be released, and without being charged, tried or convicted.
The Commission documented dozens of cases of administrative detentions, usually repeated numerous times, suffered by human rights defenders.
One example concerns Salah Hammouri, a French-Palestinian, is a symbolic example of administrative detentions being used to oppress opposition voices. Since his first detention in 2001, when he was detained for 5 months at 16 years old, he was arrested and detained multiple times. He spent 5 other months in administrative detention in 2004 and 7 years in 2005. He was again arrested in 2022, and deported to France at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities revoked his permanent residency permit in East Jerusalem. In addition, her pregnant wife was banned from entering Palestine in 2016, and any family reunification was prevented ever since.
His deportation to France is a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law as provided in article 49 of Geneva Convention IV (1949), as well as in the Rome Statute which considers “deportation or forcible transfer of population” as a crime against humanity.
Surveillance and social media monitoring
The Commission denounced the use of the Pegasus software on human rights activists specifically. Numerous Palestinians and Jewish Israelis among them journalists, human rights defenders, artists, students and academics, have been arrested based on their social media publications.
In addition, multiple cases of inaccurately interpreted translations of Arabic posts to Hebrew are also referred to as the cause of dispute fueling excessive enforcement activities against those engaging in lawful conduct. Finally, the report mentioned specific groups that are more likely to be targeted, such as journalists and media or women human rights defenders.
Palestinian authority and the de facto authorities in Gaza
The Commission also examined intimidations and repressions suffered by activists speaking against the Palestinian Authority, asking for more transparency, greater separation of powers and eradication of corruption.
Conclusions:
The Commission found that:
- The human rights to “freedom of association, expression and opinion, and the right to peaceful assembly, are being violated by the Government of Israel, [...]”.
- A number of economic, social and cultural rights are also being violated, including the human rights to take part or participate in cultural life, to adequate housing, to health and to work. These rights are being violated by various means, including harassment, threats, arrests, interrogations, detention, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.
- Legislation is a key method used by all duty bearers to impose restrictions on civil society actors’ operational space that the Commission considers as neither necessary nor proportionate.
- The Israeli authorities’ silencing of civil society voices that challenge government policies and narrative is intrinsically linked to the goal of ensuring and enshrining the permanent occupation at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.
The Commissions recommended that the Government of Israel:
(a) Immediately cease, without undue delay, actions that may amount to war crimes, including the unlawful deportation or transfer of protected persons from occupied territory, and permit such persons to return to their lawful residence;
(b) Immediately cease systematic practices, such as arbitrary arrest and detention, administrative detention, harassment and smear campaigns, that intimidate, punish and silence human rights defenders and journalists, in particular Palestinians, in breach of their freedom of association, expression and opinion, and their right to peaceful assembly;
(c) Immediately cease practices that may amount to torture or ill-treatment; and ensure that all allegations of such violations are promptly, impartially and independently investigated and perpetrators are brought to justice;
(d) Urgently act to hold non-State actors, including settlers, accountable for human rights abuses committed against civil society;
(e) Repeal laws and provisions that obstruct the work of civil society, including laws imposing unnecessary and unreasonable financial, procedural and technical barriers; and halt any draft legislation that may have an adverse effect on civil society;
(f) Urgently revoke the designation of Palestinian human rights and humanitarian organisations as terrorist or unlawful organisations.
Interactive dialogue
It is of note, that although a country concerned by the Commission's report, Israel did not exercise its right to take the floor to comment on the substance of the report.
The representative of the State of Palestine thanked the Commission for its work and denounced the countries that joined the US in the submission of a statement against the mandate of the Commission. He condemned Israel for refusing to cooperate with the Human Rights Council mechanisms, especially in not granting entry visas to the UN experts.
The delegate expressed some doubts about some cases mentioned in the report regarding violations committed by the Palestinian Authority. However, he assured that Palestinian Authorities are looking into the other named cases.
The Commissioner General of the Independent Commission for Human Rights - Palestine (Mr. Issam Aruri) confirmed the grave and deteriorating situation of CSOs, notably through their harassment, designation as terrorist organisations and legislations and supported the recommendations for Israel to cease its suppressive activities.
The delegate of the United States of America: expressed the concerns of some countries regarding the open-ended nature of the Commission mandate and the alleged unclear limitations of their review of activities around the escalations of May 2021. She further complained about the Commission as an example of “the longstanding disproportionate attention given to Israel”, which it called on to “stop”. She reminded the Human Rights Council that it should evenly examine all human rights violations in all regions without further polarisation.
Venezuela on behalf of the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter expressed the counter views of countries raising concerns about the attempts by some to undermine the Commission’s mandate.
He encouraged the Commission to focus its next report on the root causes of the situation, especially in investigating the 75 years denial of the Palestinians’ right to self determination and return to their land. He called the Israeli regime a colonial and apartheid regime.
Speaking on behalf of the European Union, the delegate recalled that EU states did not originally support the establishment of this mandate in 2021 due to the overly broad nature of the Commission’s mandate.
He reiterated the EU’s position on the situation in Palestine, namely the respect for status quo in the Holy places, strong condemnation for terrorism and violence, concerns for Gaza combined with opposition to Israel settlements policies and activities. He finished by affirming that accountability is key to achieve peace in the region and by recalling the EU support for CSOs in the region.
The representative of Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), thanked the Commission for its work and expressed the OIC’s full support for its future activities. He expressed the organisation’s concerns over the attempts to undermine the Commission’s authority and the lack of cooperation by Israel. He deemed unconscionable that Israel “self-styled democracy” openly mocks and violates the core tenets of international law as set out in the violations identified in the report.
The delegate recommended to the Commission to cover in its next report, analysis of the protection granted to Israeli occupiers along with the lack of accountability for settler-led violence. He also recommended examining third-states’ obligations to ensure respect of international law in the OPT and the proposition of concrete measures to ensure Palestinians’ right of self determination is upheld.
Oman on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), after thanking the Commission, the representative called the international community to intervene to stop Israeli violations, targeting Palestinians inhabitants in East Jerusalem and the holy places’ status quo.
He reiterated GCC’s support to the establishment of a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The delegate of Lebanon on behalf of the group of Arab States deplored the lack of cooperation demonstrated by Israel with the Commission and joined the chorus of condemnation for the attempts to undermine the Commission’s mandate.
He recalled that the policies targeting CSOs are an essential part of the colonial and apartheid regime in the OPT. He stressed that ending the occupation is a first step toward preventing violence against Palestinian people. He urged the Commission to address the root causes of the Nakba and the denial of the right of Palestinian people to self determination.
Position of Geneva International Centre for Justice
Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ) welcomes and supports the efforts undertaken by the Commission and the global civil society to highlight the precarious situation of civil society in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in a comprehensive and evidence-based report. We express our incredulity at the joint statement launched by the United States and supported by some twenty States denouncing the Commission of Inquiry, without any reliable arguments, and accusing it of being “biassed”. This is only an attempt to discredit its mission and seeks to weaken scrutiny of some of the gravest human rights violations.
More than ever, these pressures on the Commission show how the work against human rights violations in Palestine is crucial. GICJ continues to call for accountability of Israel’s violations of international law. We therefore welcome efforts undertaken by the Commission and global civil society to highlight the precarious situation of civil society in Occupied Palestinian Territories in a comprehensive and evidence-based report, and fully support their future activities.
We maintain accountability and continue to believe that ending the occupation is the only sustainable means to bring peace to Palestine.
HRC53, Palestine, Commission of Inquiry, Geneva International Centre for Justice, GICJ
