Activities

• Leader in anti-Israel “lawfare” and BDS (boycotts, divestments and sanctions) campaigns.
• Was an active participant in the 2001 Durban World Conference against Racism, which adopted the strategy of promoting the complete international isolation and demonization of Israel through boycotts, legal attacks, and other forms of political warfare.
• In January 2020, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), of which Al-Haq is a member, vehemently opposed a new clause in European Union grant contracts with Palestinian NGOs that prohibits grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. According to media reports, PNGO claimed that Palestinian terrorist organizations are “political parties.”
  • On January 2, 2020, Al-Haq’s General Director Shawan Jabarin published a letter, “I Write to Resist,” criticizing and belittling the importance of the EU’s anti-terrorism clause by stating that the “newly added clause, commonly referred to as an anti-terrorism clause…could undermine the ability of Palestinian civil society organizations to engage with Palestinian society.” Jabarin further implied that Israel naming its main airport after David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding Prime Minister, “inspires (or incites) [] violent settler groups to act on the premise that the ends justify the means.”

Ties to the PFLP

• On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Al-Haq a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”
• In May 2018, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express shut down online credit card donations to Al-Haq due to the group’s ties to the PFLP.
• Shawan Jabarin
  • Al-Haq’s General Director has ties to the PFLP terrorist organization and, as a result, has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan. Click here to see NGO Monitor’s unofficial translation of the ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice (June 20, 2007).
  • In July 2021, Jabarin attended an event in memory of Suha Jarrar, daughter of PFLP leader Khalida Jarrar and an Environmental and Gender Policy Researcher at Al-Haq. The hall was decorated with PFLP logos.
  • In February 2019, Jabarin participated in an event hosted by the PFLP in memory of “comrade fighter” Maher Al-Yamani. Al- Yamani was a PFLP “founder,” a “member of the Central Committee and one of its most prominent military commanders,” and “coordinated special operations…in particular the operation against an aircraft of the Israeli company El Al in July 1968 in Greece.”
  • In May 2019, Shawan Jabarin attended a memorial event organized by the PFLP. It centered on PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who, according to information posted by the PFLP, “contributed to the establishment” of several PFLP-affiliated NGOs. The hall was decorated with PFLP paraphernalia.
  • According to multiple Arabic-language media sources, Al-Haq General Director Shawan Jabarin represented the PFLP at a December 2011 meeting of the Follow-Up Committee for Issues of Public Liberties and Trust Building.  This body served as a reconciliatory body between Hamas, Fatah, PIJ, the PFLP, and other Palestinian factions.
    • According to coverage in the Al-Wafd news outlet, Jabarin, a “PFLP representative on the committee” announced his resignation after he was identified by his PFLP affiliation.  According to Al-Wafd, Jabarin complained that “classifying committee members according to their parties does not benefit its work, but complicates it and intensifies its problems. This [refraining from classifying party affiliation] is what I asked from the committee as its member.”
  • Jabarin was convicted in 1985 for recruiting and arranging training for members for the PFLP. A 1994 Israeli statement to the UN notes that he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.”
  • In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected Jabarin’s appeal to travel abroad, stating that “the current petitioner is apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organization, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization which has not shied away from murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights…”
  • In 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court noted that Jabarin is “among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organization.”
  • In 2009, Jabarin was again prohibited by the Israeli authorities from travelling abroad. Jabarin appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court which rejected his appeal, stating, “We found that the material pointing to the petitioner’s involvement in the activity of terrorist entities is concrete and reliable material.”
  • Shawan Jabarin is a former Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) board member.
    • Several DCI-P board members have close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
    • Hashem Abu Maria, coordinator of DCI-P’s community mobilization unit, was hailed by the PFLP as a “leader” after his death in 2014. On September 23, 2014, DCI-P uploaded a video of a memorial service for Abu Maria, featuring a speech by DCI-P General Director, Rifat Odeh Kassis. The courtyard where the memorial service took place was decorated with PFLP flags, posters, and pictures of prominent PFLP figures, such as founder George Habash and former leader Ahmed Sa’adat. Nearly all of the audience are dressed in PFLP apparel.

Political Advocacy

• In April 2021, Al-Haq was a signatory on a joint submission to the UN Secretary-General on Intimidation and Reprisals for Cooperation with the UN, stating that “Since its establishment, Israel has created and maintained an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression, amounting to apartheid, over the Palestinian people as a whole…Israel has sought to fundamentally undermine key human rights and accountability work and thereby further entrenched impunity for its apartheid regime over Palestinians” (emphasis added).
• In April 2021, Al-Haq Head of Legal Research and Advocacy Susan Power published a paper titled “The Legal Architecture of Apartheid.” According to the paper, “The State of Israel seeks to justify this discriminatory practice by claiming that Palestinians abuse their basic rights by engaging in and facilitating terrorist activity.  These laws, and their associated justifications and practices, are the legal basis of Israel’s apartheid regime.”
• In February 2021, Al-Haq published a joint policy paper titled “United States Policy on Palestine: 2021 and Beyond” calling for the “US to reevaluate its past blanket support of Israel” and “end the decades long environment of impunity that it has enabled for Israel to entrench its settler colonization and apartheid in the Palestinian territory.” The policy calls to “ban the import of all Israeli settlement products and services” and “End all military aid to Israel.”
• In February 2021, Al-Haq, together with Forensic Architecture, alleged that Israeli forces acted unlawfully in shooting Ahmed Erekat when he rammed his car into a soldier at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem in June 2020. The NGOs did not offer new or concrete evidence, and did not know and could not incorporate the assessments of the Israeli forces on the ground. (Read NGO Monitor’s report “EU-Funded, ICC-Linked Al-Haq and Forensic Architecture on the Ahmad Erekat Shooting.”)
• In January 2021, sent a letter to Pfizer “expressing concern at Israel’s racially discriminatory exclusion of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from its vaccination efforts.” In the letter, Al-Haq urged Pfizer to “ensure that its vaccine is not used to contribute to adverse human rights impacts, or to reinforce and further entrench the unlawful situation in Palestine as it stands.”
  • Al-Haq falsely claimed that Israel has legal obligations to ensure that vaccines be provided to Palestinians, while altogether ignoring that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; and that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policy for its population.
• In September 2019, Al-Haq, alongside Al-Marsad, submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights alleging that “Israel illegally exploits energy resources” and “governs the OPT and Golan in a sovereign-like manner, permanently alienating public immoveable land and natural resources.”
• In July 2019, Al-Haq held a side event at the 41^st session of the Human Rights Council on “Climate and Environmental Justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” At the event, Suha Jarrar, Environmental and Gender Policy Researcher at Al-Haq and daughter of PFLP leader Khalida Jarrar, placed sole blame on Israel for climate change, stating that “the majority of environmental problems are the result of Israel’s occupation and not climate change…scientific proof shows that climate change is not yet impacting Palestine…the major obstacle for water availability is Israel and Mekorot not climate change…”
• On May 18, 2019, Al-Haq was a signatory on a statement referring to all of Jerusalem as “occupied,” and called for the UN to “take a firm stand against…unlawful unilateral measures to be taken by the U.S. in favor of an unveiled attempt at legitimizing Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, occupation and colonization.” The statement further called to “Ban Israeli settlement products” and “Impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on individuals that are identified as responsible for or complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
• In July 2017, Al-Haq asserted that convicted terrorists have a “right” to receive salaries from the PA, and General Director Shawan Jabarin stated that “If their rights are eroded we are heading for a real crisis in Palestinian society and in due course toward an explosion.”
• In June 2017, Al-Haq signed a statement marking the “50th year since the start of Israel’s occupation” calling upon the international community to refrain from “recognizing, cooperating with, or providing any assistance to Israeli occupation policies and practices”; pressure Israel to “end the closure on Gaza, withdraw all Occupying Forces from Palestinian territory,…Tear down the Annexation Wall,…Release Palestinian prisoners”; and recognize “the State of Palestine.”

Lawfare

• Regularly files lawsuits and submits politically motivated reports to the UN Human Rights Council and other international bodies.
• Proposed sabotaging the Israeli court system by “flooding the [Israeli Supreme] Court with petitions in the hope of obstructing its functioning and resources.”
• On February 6, 2021, following the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber Iruling that the Court has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories, Al-Haq, alongside Al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), published a press release stating, “…it is imperative that the Prosecutor include acts of apartheid in the scope of her investigation…The decision confirmed the State of Palestine… as a full and legitimate State Party to the Rome Statute, and the entirety of the oPt as within the scope of territorial jurisdiction for investigation into international crimes…” (emphasis added). The organizations stressed that they will continue their “tireless” cooperation with the ICC, having submitted “six substantial communications and thousands of eyewitness files to the Office of the Prosecutor…”
• In July 2019, on the 15^th anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion against Israel’s Security Barrier, Al-Haq published a statement saying that “the weak responses by third States have effectively given Israel a carte blanche, to remove and erase Palestinian presence in order to transfer in Israeli Jews to Judaize the territory. Meanwhile the prolonged occupation has taken on a permanent and illegal character and the situation now represents a colonisation, annexation, occupation and apartheid” (emphasis added).
• In October 2018, Al-Haq, alongside Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), submitted to the International Criminal Court prosecutor a report accusing Israel of “extracting and destroying Palestinian natural resources.”  According to Shawan Jabarin, “Israelis and private actors have been deliberately and openly exploiting Palestinian natural resources for at least five decades. The exploitation of Palestinian natural resources by Israel, Israelis, as well as corporations, finances and thereby sustains and allows for the expansion of Israeli settlements, including by providing profitable employment to settlers and a secure living environment.”
• Al-Haq has submitted various documents to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  • In March 2020, alongside Al-Mezan, Al-Dameer, and Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al-Haq submitted an amicus brief “welcom[ing[ and support[ing] the findings of the Prosecutor that there is a reasonable basis to believe that international crimes have been committed in the occupied Palestinian territory, comprising the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.”
  • In December 2017, Al-Haq, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, and Al-Dameer submitted a document to the Prosecutor of the ICC  examining “Israel’s inability and unwillingness to conduct effective investigations ” and called for “investigation into the serious international crimes committed during the July-August 2014 Israeli military offensive.”
  • On September 20, 2017, these NGOs submitted a “substantive communication” to the Prosecutor of the ICC alleging that “high-level Israeli civilian and military officials have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem.”
  • On November 22, 2016, the four NGOs delivered a submission to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, “Requesting Investigation and Prosecution of The Illegal Closure of the Gaza Strip.”
  • In February 2016, the NGOs “provided evidence of the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity” and concluded that “high-ranking Israeli military and civilian officials committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during Operation Protective Edge.”
  • On November 23, 2015, the four NGOs submitted a document claiming evidence and testimonies of alleged Israeli “war crimes” perpetrated during the 2014 Gaza war.
• On May 14, 2016, Shawan Jabarin spoke at the “Malaga Legal Experts Conference,” organized by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), aimed at “reviewing all efforts relevant to employing the principle of Universal Jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli war criminals and how these efforts relate to action before the ICC.”
• In 2010, filed a criminal complaint against the Dutch company, Riwal, for alleged complicity “in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The complaint was dismissed in May 2013.
• Supported the December 2009 arrest warrant secured in the UK by Hamas against Israeli opposition leader and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, claiming she bore “special responsibility for the war crimes and possible crimes against humanity that characterized Israel’s actions during the assault on Gaza.”
• Worked with Al Mezan to secure an arrest warrant in the UK against Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in September 2009.
• In 2008, Al-Haq, alongside the Bil’in Village Council, filed a lawsuit, Bil’in (Village Council) v. Green Park International Ltd. (Quebec, Canada 2008) accusing a Canadian company of “aiding, abetting, assisting and conspiring with the State of Israel” to commit “war crimes.” Canadian courts dismissed this case and imposed costs on the plaintiffs.
• In 2006, filed a case against the British government to end export licenses to Israel; it was dismissed by the UK Court of Appeal in 2008.  A similar case filed in 2009 was also dismissed in the preliminary stages.

BDS Activities

• In December 2021, at a conference held by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) opposing Israel’s declaring six NGOs, including Al-Haq, as terror organizations, Al-Haq Business and Human Rights Program Coordinator Wesam Ahmad stated that “The international community must respond with a systemic counter response that addresses Israel’s actions in various levels…We have to show that everything is connected. Supporting the process at the ICC, taking measures to ban settlement products, supports of the UN database on business enterprises involved in the settlement enterprise. These are all actions we have been calling for. The response to attempts to silence us should be met with the implementation of these calls” (emphasis added).
• In August 2021, Al-Haq signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
• In June 2021, Al-Haq was a signatory on a letter to President Biden to “Halt Weapons Sales to Israel.”
• In May 2021, Al-Haq was a signatory on a statement calling to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspend free-trade agreements with Israel,” and “Ensure that individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid are brought to justice.”
• In 2018-2020, Al-Haq lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. Al-Haq has signed multiple letters to the UN calling for the database to be implemented without further delay.
  • In January 2020, Al-Haq called for people to lobby their local parliamentarians to demand for the release of the database.
• In May 2020, Al-Haq was a signatory on a statement calling for “Immediate targeted sanctions to stop Israel’s annexation and apartheid.” The statement further called for “A ban on arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspension of trade and cooperation agreements with Israel,” and “Investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid.”
• In April 2020, Al-Haq and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN, Ireland) published a report titled “Business and Human Rights in Occupied Territory: A Guidance for Upholding Human Rights” presenting a prejudicial account of business activity in the West Bank and implicitly demanding that States impose sanctions on Israel.
• In July 2019, Al-Haq called for the Canadian government to “take a stance against Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, in line with Canada’s obligations under international law including not to recognise, give effect or assist an unlawful situation, by banning trade in settlement products and services entirely.” Al-Haq further called for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to “adopt labels for settlement-made products which accurately allow consumers to exercise their right to buy conscientiously and make informed decisions.”
• In May 2019, Al-Haq was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
• In February 2019, Al-Haq was a signatory on a letter to the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund calling to refrain from investing money in “Israel’s unlawful settlement enterprise.” According to the letter, “corporations may be complicit in aiding and abetting the destruction of property and forcible displacement of the Palestinian population, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
• In January 2019, Al-Haq supported the Irish “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied territories)” bill which would make it illegal for Irish citizens and residents to import or sell “settlement goods” or to provide or attempt to provide “settlement services.”
• In June 2018, Al-Haq, alongside the French League of Human Rights (LDH), International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), and the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine (PFP), published a report, “The Jerusalem light-rail and how French companies contribute to the settlement of Occupied Palestinian Territory,” despite French court rulings that building the Jerusalem Light Rail is not illegal. The report calls for French companies Systra, Egis, and Alstom  to “terminate their contracts with the Israeli authorities” and urged the French State “to take all the measures needed to ensure that the three public operators, SNCF, RATP and CDC, terminate the contracts signed in the context of the implementation of the Jerusalem tramway, by the companies they control, SYSTRA and Egis; and to take all the measure needed to prevent any participation or investment by French companies that would contribute to Israeli settlement.”
  • Following the report, Al-Haq published a press release “salut[ing]” the announcement by the CEO of SNCF that “Systra is withdrawing from the red and purple line of the Jerusalem light-rail” and referring to it as “a first victory on a just path.”
• In May 2018, Al-Haq was a signatory on a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “Investigate Israel’s Use of Lethal Force in Gaza.” The letter accused Israel of using American weapons against Palestinian demonstrators and called to “halt any further assistance to all Israeli military units involved in these shootings.” The letter ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
• In March 2017, Al-Haq, along with groups including International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH),  Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), CCFD- Terre Solidaire, and the French League of Human Rights (LDH) published a document ‘The dangerous ties between French banks and insurances companies with the Israeli occupation‘, which recommended that the French government pressure French financial institutions to “disengage without delay from any financial link with the Israeli banking system,” and create “a legislative proposal prohibiting enterprises from all sectors to invest in the settlements.”
  • The report only points to very minor and indirect connections, if at all, to settlements, and French courts have repeatedly found that such business activity is not illegal. The report was funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Staff

• Wesam Ahmad
  • At a June 2017 CEIRPP conference, “United Nations Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation,” Wesam Ahmad, Al-Haq Program Assistant, remarked that Israel “was a colonial project from the very beginning and in fact Israel has been able to benefit from the historical colonial practices to develop what I call ‘best business practice model of colonization’.” (Video of this statement available on UN Web TV, at 1:29:22)
  • In March 2014, Ahmad participated in a conference held by the University of Amsterdam on the topic of the “role of the European Union in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the case of businesses invested in illegal settlements, labelling settlement products and EU’s commitments to respect and promote human rights.”
  • In July 2013, Ahmad told the Financial Times that “In our opinion it is not sufficient for the European Commission to punt responsibility to the consumer…The Europeans have obligations under international law to prohibit these goods by banning them from entering the market.”
• Raja Shehadeh
  • Shehadeh is a founder of Al-Haq and a member of Military Court Watch’s advisory board.
  • On March 20, 2017, spoke at SOAS on “Is Israel afraid of peace? Reflections on the failures of international law and human rights, and on sources of hope.” Shehadeh spoke about how it “is almost 50 years since the Six-Day War. The end of those hostilities witnessed the Israeli occupation of former Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza, and the displacement of 300,000 Palestinian citizens. After half a century of devastating regional conflicts a resolution to the situation appears no closer.”
  • In a 2012 interview with the ICRC, Shehadeh stated that “the occupation is of a colonial nature. Its aim ultimately is to encourage – certainly not by using force – the Palestinians to leave and to be replaced by Israeli settlers.” He furthered that a structure was introduced to “resolve the problem of how to apply Israeli laws to one part of the population and not to the other, and how to discriminate in an official, ‘legal’ manner between the two groups of inhabitants living on the same territory. This was how apartheid was introduced to the OPT.”
  • According to Shehadeh, “we cannot speak about the occupation without speaking about the settlements and the fact that people do not see Israel only as an occupier that controls certain aspects of their lives, but as a colonizer that is after their land. It feels like a cancerous growth that is eating up their body and making normal life impossible in every way.”
• Jonathan Kuttab
  • A member of Al-Haq’s General Assembly and Board of Directors, Kuttab also serves on the board of Sabeel.
  • Kuttab has advocated for a “one-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which seeks to eliminate Jewish self-determination. In December 2017, Kuttab gave a lecture titled “A Vision for One State in Israel/Palestine.” In 2009, Kuttab, wrote an article stating that “Zionism will ultimately need to redefine its goals and aspirations, this time without ignoring or seeking to dispossess the indigenous Palestinian population. Palestinians will also have to deal with this reality, and accept — even enthusiastically endorse — the elements required to make Jews truly feel at peace in the single new state that will be the home of both people.”
  • In September 2015, Kuttab participated in a conference titled “Waging Peace: Doing Justice Through BDS,” speaking about “Why should BDS be considered a strategy for doing justice in the Holy Land?” He will share BDS history, principles, variety, effectiveness, its use in the occupied territories, and as a strategy being used by churches, and peace/justice organizations.”
• In December 2010, Maureen Claire Murphy, managing editor of Electronic Intifada and a former Al-Haq employee, was subpoenaed by the FBI to appear before a Federal Grand Jury for her work with the Palestine Solidarity Group.