Defending Palestinians with Strategic Litigation

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Adalah’s team wishes you and your families a happy, healthy holiday and New Year. We thank you for your steadfast support for Adalah in 2022, and ask that you continue to stand with us as we confront mounting challenges in the coming year.

Throughout 2022, the current ‘change’ government engaged in serious human rights violations, including the bogus designation of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil organizations as ‘terror organizations’; approving 4,000 new housing units in the illegal settlements in the West Bank; and engaging in nightly raids in the West Bank that resulted in the highest annual tally of Palestinians killed over the past seven years. 

However, despite these formidable obstacles and the deteriorating political situation, Adalah was able to obtain significant achievements for Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).  

Positive outcomes that we achieved through our legal work, international advocacy initiatives and media outreach included re-activating the Food Security Council and ensuring Arab representation on this crucial body; defending Bedouin residents of Ras Jrabah village in the Naqab (Negev) in court against the state’s attempts to evacuate and dispossess them; enabling Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Syrian residents of the Golan Heights to apply for higher education scholarships from the Israeli lottery; securing the removal of all ten police checkpoints erected in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem during protests against home demolitions; and representing Arab political parties against attempts by right-wing actors to disqualify them from Knesset elections. We are extremely proud of these results as we contemplate the year that is drawing to an end, and look ahead to 2023.

The fight before us will be largely shaped by the results of the Knesset elections held in November 2022, which delivered a comfortable victory to the exclusively radical right-wing and Ultra-Orthodox coalition. The ruling coalition includes virulently racist parties, some leaders of which are affiliated with the former Kach Party, declared a terror organization by Israel in the 1980s, or have been criminally convicted for incitement to violence against Palestinians. Such a government stands alongside some of the darkest regimes in history.

Click Here to view a slideshow of Highlights of Adalah's work in 2022

Other items on the coalition’s agenda are, alarmingly, relaxing the open-fire regulations of the Israeli police and armed forces, along with expanded powers and even greater impunity; the imposition of yet more restrictions based on Jewish religious law on the entire population; and limiting women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. 

The coalition also seeks to promote plans to alter the Israeli legal system and weaken the powers of the judiciary, by rendering Knesset legislation immune from judicial review through a Knesset override law, for example, and by introducing a highly-politicized judicial selection process. At the same time, it plans to bolster the powers of the government and the Knesset, at the expense of the principle of the separation of powers.

The incoming government is planning to make moves against Palestinian citizens of Israel, which could include evacuating the remaining unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Naqab and ending Bedouin land disputes in favor of the state; expanding the use of ‘breach of loyalty’ as grounds for revoking citizenship; employing the Jewish Nation-State Law more broadly to discriminate against Palestinian citizens in state services and budgeting; and further militarizing policing in Arab towns and villages and in the mixed cities.

The advent of the new government presents grave dangers to both Palestinian and Israeli societies, including civil society organizations and human rights defenders, who are already embattled in the aftermath of the outlawing of the ‘Palestinian 6’ as ‘terror organizations’. In November 2022, religious Zionist leader and incumbent Finance Minister labelled human rights organizations an “existential threat to the State of Israel” and threatened that the government would target their sources of income through “legal and security means”.

Today, the involvement of the international community is clearly critical. It is imperative that we stand together against these threats.  

Please consider making an end-of-year donation or a monthly recurring gift to Adalah, to allow us to continue to fight for the rights of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. 

The Adalah Team

Links:

• Highlights of Adalah's work in 2022