In its response to a call for input by UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, Al-Haq drew urgent attention to the escalating and systematic efforts to silence Palestinian voices and dismantle the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society. The submission highlights how Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime has intensified its campaign to suppress resistance, criminalise advocacy and quash any pursuit of accountability as it pursues Palestinian erasure.

At the heart of the submission is the recognition that mounting attacks against Palestinian human rights defenders is not incidental to Israel’s Zionist regime; it is purposeful and strategic. Recent attempts at quashing Palestinians' legal fight for justice, namely the United States’ imposition of sanctions against Al-Haq, Al-Mezan and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), are the latest in a relentless campaign by Israel and its allies to eliminate the Palestinian people and systematically deny their collective right to self-determination and return, carried out under the cover of international impunity.

Since the establishment of Israel, Palestinian perspectives and experiences – as told by Palestinians – have been sidelined. Israeli and Western narratives have dominated the discourse, while any analysis of Palestinian efforts to pursue accountability are buried through censorship in mainstream media, and now equally on social media platforms; active and escalating smear campaigns against organisations and individuals defending the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people; and now by stripping Palestinian human rights defenders of the very means to function. Thus, as international awareness of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people grows, so too do efforts to undermine global solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

The submission draws necessary attention to role played these multifaceted and targeted attacks against Palestinian human rights defenders in Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people. Just as Israel seeks to eliminate Palestinian journalists shedding light on Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza, it also seeks to destroy leading organisations that are documenting, analysing and exposing Israel’s international crimes across the entirety of the unlawfully occupied Palestinian territory.

Al-Haq highlighted that the designation and sanctioning of the organisations by Israel and the United States, further amounts to the “Persecution of organisations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid”, which under Article 2(f) of the Apartheid Convention is an act of the crime of apartheid.

The designations under the Executive Order itself are intended to prevent the organisations from engaging in crucial accountability work in the OPT and supporting the work of the International Criminal Court. Along with the patterns of attacks on journalists in Gaza, the denial of entry of experts to investigate crimes in Gaza, the sanctioning of the organisations by the US at the behest of Israel, further amounts to complicity in genocide, enabling Israel to destroy the Palestinian people with impunity.

Despite overwhelming documentation of the multifaceted attacks against Palestinian human rights defenders, the UN system has proven largely incapable of providing protection. Palestinian human rights defenders who engage with UN mechanisms, such as special procedures or treaty bodies, do so at great personal risk. Yet even when targeted, there are no meaningful consequences for the perpetrators.

Because of this, Al-Haq stated that meaningful action now lies in the hands of individual States willing to confront Israel’s entrenched impunity and take meaningful action to end its mass atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Based on the aforementioned developments, Al-Haq made the following recommendations to the UN:

• Use all available means to restore and protect the rights of all human rights defenders operating in the OPT, as required under Articles 2, 19 and 22 of the ICCPR, and ensure that no new laws are enacted which stifle the voices of human rights defenders;

• Repeal the following laws, and any other laws that violate Articles 2, 19 and 22 of the ICCPR: the Mandatory Disclosure of Foreign Entity Funding Law; the Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott; Amendment No. 28 to the Entry to Israel Law; Israel—the Nation-State of the Jewish People Law; Nakba Law; and the Breaking the Silence Law;

• Condemn the application of Executive Order 14203 as an internationally wrongful act of apartheid and genocide, and exert meaningful pressure on the United States to lift all sanctions imposed under Executive Order 14203;

• Pursue a Protective Presence in Gaza, an aid convoy, sanctions, and the creation of an IIIM accountability mechanism for Palestine;

• Use all means necessary to implement the recommendations in the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.

The full submission can be accessed here.