Intal

Activities

• Claims that the organization “stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their battle against the occupation and for the right of return.”
• Calls for “the end of Zionism as the State of Israel’s ideology,” a “right of return for all Palestinian refugees,” and “the end of Israel as a state in which Jews must at all price be the majority and where non-Jewish populations are discriminated against.”
• In July 2021, Intal was a signatory on a letter to the World Health Organization calling for the “immediate release of Ms. Shatha Odeh, and ensure that the services provided by HWC are restored.”
  • On July 7, 2021, Israel arrested Odeh for her alleged involvement in terror activity. Following her arrest, the IDF closed HWC’s offices for six months.
  • Numerous HWC staff members, founders, board members, general assembly members, and senior staff members have ties to the PFLP terror group. For more information on HWC’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Health Work Committees’ Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”
• In March 2021, Intal published a statement entitled “Israel, world leader in vaccination and apartheid.” Intal falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to provide vaccines to the 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 March 2020, Intal referred to Gaza as the “largest open-air prison in the world.”
• In January 2020, Intal wrote an article about President Trump’s “Peace Plan” discussing the “fragmented ghettos in the West Bank,” and stating that “Israel has been conducting an ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem for some time.”
• In December 2017, Intal participated in a rally against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival in in Brussels, stating, “war criminals not welcome here.”
• In July 2018, Intal was a signatory on a call to tell President Donald Trump he is “not welcome” in Belgium because he “is also a minister of Israel’s occupation policy and a strong supporter of Israel’s apartheid system.”
• In June 2018, Intal was a signatory on a statement calling to free Khalida Jarrar. Jarrar, Addameer’s former vice chair, is a senior PFLP official who was indicted for various offenses, including active membership in a terrorist organization (the PFLP) and inciting violence through a call to kidnap Israeli soldiers. She also has been placed in administrative detention multiple times and is again there for being a “threat to the security of the state.”
• In May 2018, Intal published an article titled “Nightmare and Resistance of Palestinians,” stating that the Nakba “recalls the memory of the more than 400 villages destroyed by the Zionists.” Intal also affirmed that “the origins of the [Palestinian] tragedy date back to November 1917… At this time, the Zionist movement has already made the decision to colonize this territory for almost twenty years.” Intal further considered that “with the [1948] war, the logic of expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Zionist project intensified,” but that “all the Nakba…of the world didn’t succeed to stop the Palestinian resistance” (emphasis added).
• In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, Intal released statement to “stop impunity and massacre” against the “unarmed Palestinians.” The statement further called for the “respect and promotion of the peaceful demands of the BDS (Boycott – Disinvestment – Sanctions) movement.” The statement ignored the violent nature of the protests, which included Molotov cocktails, arson, and attempts to breach the border fence with Israel.
• Signatory to a 2017 statement marking the anniversaries of the 1917 Balfour declaration, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, and the Six Day War. The statement calls for “the suspension of the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel” and on the international community “to cease all complicity with continued settlement activity and the myriad of ways that Israel violates international law.” The statement condemns the 1947 UN partition plan, claiming it “resulted in the 1948 Nakba, the demolition of more than 530 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and is thus a process of ethnic cleansing”; and claims that European countries “made Palestine carry the consequences of the monstrous genocide of the European Jews by the Nazis; and subsequently they did nothing to require that Israel respect UN resolutions.”
• In October 2011, Intal published an article “Women’s rights in Palestine: a double struggle” that claims that “the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an obstacle for Palestinian women” in “their struggle for rights and equality.” The article suggests that some Palestinian parents “decide to not allow their daughters to go to school and sometimes prefer to marry their daughters at a young age…to avoid degrading treatment [by Israelis] at the checkpoints.” Intal also claims that “mobility restriction [of Palestinians] increased the number of weddings within same family in the village” and that this “increases the risks of genetic anomalies.”
• Hosts an annual bike ride through Brussels to draw attention to Israel’s alleged “lack of respect for international law.”

BDS Activities

• Intal “supports the call for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), launched in 2005 by more than 170 members of Palestinian civil society.”
• In September 2021, Intal participated in a campaign titled “Don’t Buy into Occupation Coalition.” As part of the campaign, the coalition of NGOs published a report alleging to “investigate and expose the financial relationships between businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and European Financial Institutions (FIs).” The report called for European governments to “prohibit the import of illegal settlement products and services from entering European markets, and ban trade with and economic support for illegal Israeli settlements.”
• Other pro-BDS NGOs involved in the campaign include Al-Haq, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), Trocaire, ELSC, Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), and The Rights Forum.
• In September 2020, to draw further attention to its BDS campaigns, Intal posted on its website an interview with Omar Barghouti, co-founder of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), who encouraged BDS stating that “Arab states and our global allies must therefore put pressure on the UN to adopt tough sanctions against Israel, as it did in the past against South Africa.” Barghouti further announced that “We will redouble our efforts to develop the BDS movement for Palestinian rights so that Israel is held accountable for all of its crimes against our people.”
• In April 2020, Intal posted on Facebook a call for the multinational insurance firm AXA to “Stop investing in Israeli apartheid.” Intal argued that AXA’s investment in Elbit Systems and Israeli banks provides “impunity for the occupation” that it is “responsible the Palestinian health system’s failure to responds to COVID-19.”
• In March 2019, Intal held an event for Israel Apartheid Week titled “Belgian Money for Israeli Weapons?” to discuss “Belgian complicity in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people” and the “presence of Israel’s biggest arms company – Elbit – in Belgium and its impact on the Palestinian people.”
• In September 2018, Intal launched a petition calling for Belgium to “not play for apartheid” and not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel.
  • In November 2018, Julie Steendam from Intal spoke at an event “about the Eurovision campaign in Belgium and how people can get involved in the campaign locally.”
• In April 2018, Intal participated in an event about “how and why to boycott Israel.”
• In March 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, Intal was a signatory on a statement calling for the Belgian government to “suspend all collaborations with Israel as long as the latter does not respect international law. A military embargo against Israel must be applied immediately.”
• In March 2018, Intal referred to Franco-Belgian financial institution Dexia’s resell of its subsidiary in Israel as a “victory” of the campaign “Israel colonizes, Dexia funds.”
  • In an interview, Mario Franssen, a spokesperson for Intal and for the Dexia Bank divestment campaign,  stated: “Our first campaign slogan was ‘Dexia out of Israel’, but as we wanted to reach a wide range of organizations with this campaign, we chose to focus on international law and the occupied Palestinian territories since it allowed us to build a broad front around this theme. We knew of course that an active bank in Israel also has links with the settlements. The Israeli economy is fully interconnected with the economy of the occupation. If we could get Dexia to end its activities in the occupied territories, it had to withdraw from Israel.” (Emphasis added).
• In September 2016, Intal launched a petition for a “Belgian military embargo against Israel.” According to the petition, “Our regions must not support the occupation, the deadly violence and the illegal colonization of Palestine by selling or buying weapons equipment to Israel, which allows it directly or indirectly to perpetuate this often condemned policy.”
• In 2013, hosted a demonstration in front of the European Commission against investments in Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. Participants in the demonstration lay on the floor covered in fake blood.
• Continues to campaign against G4S, to end Belgian cooperation with the company over the latter’s work in Israel.
• Runs an “Embargo” campaign, which aims to end arms trade, research, funding, and cooperation between Belgium and Israel. Organized a Nakba Day protest in 2013 as part of the campaign.
• In a 2011 interview, Franssen noted that though he “supports a broader boycott campaign against all of Israel, he and his colleagues came to the conclusion that this would be an unwise strategy. ‘Focusing on Israel would limit very much our ability to rally many groups around the campaign,’ he said. ‘That’s why we decided to focus on the Occupation.’”
• Advocates against the illegality of BDS campaigns.
• In 2009, urged Muslims to boycott Israeli dates during Ramadan, advertising such with a poster of “bleeding” dates. The campaign was reminiscent of medieval antisemitic “blood libel” accusations.