The groups – including the human rights organization Al-Hak and the Addameer prisoners’ association – have ties to the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), it said in a statement on Friday. The organizations are among other things crucial for the financing of the PFLP. They would have received large sums of money from European countries. The PFLP also used the money to make payments to the families of assassins.
The human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized Israel’s decision. “This terrible and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement,” it said in a joint statement.
Israel announced that with this decision, all activities of the groups in the country are prohibited. Anyone who joins them or supports them could be prosecuted. Israel will turn to international institutions that support these organizations financially or work with them. The aim is to end this aid.
Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Hak, described Israel’s move as “a dangerous development,” as the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. It is a tactic to stop the facilities and “dry up their financial resources”.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry spoke in a statement of “a strategic attack on Palestinian civil society,” as Wafa reported.
In 1967 Israel conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among others. The United Nations classify the areas as occupied. The Palestinians want them for an independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.