On 19 October 2021, Israel designated six Palestinian human rights organizations—Addameer, Al-Haq, 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—as terrorist organizations. After the ban, an Israeli official told American media that arrests of the organizations' leadership was not being pursued, the goal was to cut off funding for the targeted groups. Although the ban was justified on the basis that the organizations had links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, no evidence for such links has been made public by Israel.
The ban was widely criticised by human rights organisations. The US government was reviewing the evidence as of April 2022. Some European countries said they would continue to fund the organisations from the list, while one such organisation has had their funding cut by the Netherlands.
Background
Since 1967, more than 400 organizations in the Palestinian territories have been banned by Israel, including all major Palestinian political parties and several media and charity groups. The six targeted organizations had been operating for decades in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories as part of the Palestinian NGOs Network. All of them received funding from Western governments and documented allegations of human rights violations, war crimes and apartheid by Israel. This documentation was a major factor in the opening of the International Criminal Court investigation in Palestine. Al-Haq faced longstanding allegations by Israel of a connection to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; its executive director, Shawan Jabarin, spent eight years imprisoned without charge.
After May 2021, some of the organizations' offices were raided, possibly to obtain evidence for the designation. On 16 October 2021, Al-Haq contacted Front Line Defenders after it suspected it had been hacked. Hacking experts later confirmed that six devices had been targeted by Pegasus, the first time that NSO Group spyware had been used against Palestinians. Among those targeted were the Bisan Center's leader Ubai al-Aboudi, a United States citizen, and Adameer researcher Salah Hamouri, who is a citizen of France.
The ban of the organizations is based on the . Legal scholars Eliav Lieblich and Adam Shinar describe the law as "flawed beyond repair". Organizations only learn that they have been designated terrorist after the fact and have limited opportunity to appeal—to the minister of defense, who is authorized to issue the declaration in the first place. Although it is possible to appeal in the courts, a court is virtually guaranteed to rule against the organization because of the use of secret evidence that the defense is not allowed to see. One Western diplomat explained the reaction to the terrorism designation by explaining that terrorism laws in European countries are narrower.
Designation
Israel claims that the groups are connected to the PFLP and that more than half of the funding for the groups is being funneled to the PFLP. The groups deny any link to the PFLP. As of April 2022, Israel has not publicly released any evidence of such a link. After the ban, an Israeli official told American media that arrests of the organizations' leadership was not being pursued, the goal was to cut off funding for the targeted groups.
+972 Magazine, , and The Intercept obtained a copy of a 74-page dossier on the organization sent to European governments in May in an effort to defund the organizations; NPR, the Associated Press and other media publishers also analyzed the dossier. According to the dossier, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, and the European Union provide funding to the six organizations. Most of the dossier focuses on interrogations of two former employees of a seventh NGO, the Health Work Committees, fired on suspicion of financial wrongdoing. The employees asserted that it was generally known that the six organizations had ties to the PFLP, but did not provide any evidence. One man's lawyer said that his client's testimony could have been provided under torture or ill-treatment. According to +972 Magazine, "contrary to the Israeli Defense Ministry’s claims, the dossier did not provide a single piece of evidence proving the six organizations diverted their funds to the PFLP or to violent activities." Israeli officials said that they had more evidence. After the ban, some speculated that it was based on information provided by NGO Monitor, which The Intercept describes as "a hyperpartisan Zionist group".