Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

Founded	1996
Type	Non-profit NGO
Focus	Human rights, Arab citizens of Israel, Minority rights, Indigenous rights, Civil and political rights, Economic, social and cultural rights, Prisoners' rights, Land and planning rights "[1]
Location	Haifa, Israel(Headquarters), Beersheba(Field Office)[2]
Area served	Israel and the Occupied Territories, (see also: Occupied Palestinian Territories)
Method	Impact litigation, legal consultation, international advocacy, education, training, publication, media outreach "[3]
Mission	"To promote and defend the rights of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, 1.2 million people, or 20% of the population, as well as Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)."[3]
Website	http://www.adalah.org/eng

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Hebrew: עדאלה - המרכז המשפטי לזכויות המיעוט הערבי בישראל‎, Arabic: عدالة - المركز القانوني لحماية حقوق الأقلية العربية في اسرائيل") is a human rights organization and legal center. Its goals are "achieving individual and collective rights of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel" and protecting "the human rights of Palestinians living under occupation, based on international humanitarian law and international human rights law".^[4] "Adalah" means "Justice" in the Arabic language.

Adalah conducts the following activities to achieve these goals:^[5]

• Brings impact litigation cases and legal interventions to Israeli courts and state authorities
• Provides legal consultation to individuals, NGOs, and institutions
• Appeals to international institutions and fora, including the UN, EU, and national governments
• Organizes legal seminars and conferences
• Publishes reports and analysis of critical legal issues
• Conducts extensive media outreach in Israel and abroad
• Trains legal apprentices and new lawyers in human rights advocacy and litigation.

The organization was founded in November 1996; it is non-partisan and not-for-profit. Adalah's founder and General Director is lawyer Hassan Jabareen.

Mission and Philosophy

Adalah “consciously works to challenge the power relations in Israel from within, through the Israeli legal system”. The organization also attempts to influence Israeli public discourse through media outreach and campaigning. Adalah regularly participates in Israeli and international academic conferences.^[6]

Historian Ilan Pappe describes Adalah’s philosophy as "that the personal autonomy of the individual was a right that had to be fiercely protected, and that this right included also the collective rights of the group to which the individual belonged."^[7]

According to Adalah founder Hassan Jabareen, the legal process “emphasizes the importance of citizenship and civil rights issues for defining state-minority relations.”

Legal Advocacy

Many of Adalah's cases involve first-time legal challenges and affect Arab citizens as a collective group. “We aim to influence Israel into becoming a state that facilitates co-existence, as a first stage in its becoming into a pluralist state, one that tolerates the existence of two nations inside it. This could not be achieved without the real institutional equality that we promote,” according to Jabareen.^[8]

Adalah’s legal advocacy focuses on appealing to the Israeli Supreme Court. Between 1996-2000, it brought over twenty cases before the court dealing with equality for Arab citizens, including language rights cases, budgets of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, health and education in the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in Israel.^[7]

Legal Department

Adalah’s legal department is divided into three units: Land and Planning; Economic, Social, and Cultural; and Civil and Political (including Criminal Justice and the Occupied Palestinian Territory).

Land and Planning Rights

Adalah is challenging discriminatory land and planning laws and policies in a wide range of fields. Its litigation efforts include petitioning the courts and planning committees against forced evictions and home demolitions in the Naqab; challenging the policies of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) for making land available only to Jews; challenging the state's refusal to recognize or provide services to Arab villages and neighborhoods; objecting to planning decisions which prioritize Jewish settlements over Arab towns; and seeking to overturn policies which discriminate against Arabs in the provision of mortgages and housing assistance.^[9]

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Some of Adalah's main litigation includes: ensuring that the state implements a 2006 Supreme Court decision which declared that the 'National Priority Area' discriminates against Arab citizens; seeking to secure basic social services – such as water, electricity, schools, roads, and mother and child health clinics – in the Arab Bedouin unrecognized villages; challenging regulations which prohibit Arab citizens from opening their stores on Saturday (Sabbath); and achieving equal treatment for the Arabic language on road signs and in governmental operations, as befits its status official status.^[10]

Civil and Political Rights

Adalah's litigation activities include ensuring citizens' right to peaceful protest, including the representation of demonstrators; defending Arab MKs in political criminal cases; challenging laws which violate freedom of expression, including laws that restrict Nakba commemoration; and demanding investigations and accountability when the state employs violence against its own citizens, as it did in October 2000 with the killing of 13 Arab protesters.^[11] Adalah has also been leading the legal campaign against the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) – 2003, which denies Palestinians living in the OPT who are married to Palestinian citizens of Israel the right for residency or citizenship through family unification. This law is highly discriminatory, banning Palestinians from family unification in Israel solely on the basis of national identity.

Occupied Palestinian Territory

Adalah's work focuses on Gaza, occupied East Jerusalem and the rights of prisoners and detainees. Adalah closely monitors rights abuses in the OPT, both during and outside of military offensives, and submits impact litigation cases to expose and challenge these practices. Adalah has argued cases dealing with the denial of tort compensation to Palestinians harmed by Israeli military operations, demanding investigations into home demolitions; fighting against techniques of collective punishment imposed against the civilian population; and seeking an end to inhumane detention conditions at Israeli prisons.

International Advocacy

Adalah’s international advocacy work focuses on United Nations human rights bodies, European Union bodies, embassies/foreign diplomats based in Israel, and cooperating with international human rights organizations and networks such as the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), FIDH, HRW, Amnesty-International and others.

Adalah’s stated goals for its international advocacy are:^[6]

• To promote the Israeli government's compliance with its international human rights and humanitarian law treaty obligations and agreements. Israel has ratified all of the main UN human rights treaties and is bound to these conventions. Israel is also bound to follow several EU-Israel agreements that also contain human rights obligations.

• To raise awareness within the international community of the institutionalized discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to better protect rights on the national level, and of the gross violations of the human rights of Palestinians in the OPT. The purpose of this awareness raising is to influence international actors to compel Israel to cease its human rights violations.

Adalah’s international outreach has been met with many successes, as the Palestinian minority has gained greater visibility in the international arena. Adalah has attained ECOSOC status with the UN, and since May 2005 the European Parliament has held regular discussions on the topic of the Arab minority in Israel.^[12]

Adalah has conducted regular interventions to UN Committees in its reviews of Israel’s compliance with human rights conventions. Its outreach has helped include numerous concluding observations and recommendations by the Committees to the State regarding its treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as Palestinians in the Occupied Territory.^[13]

Adalah and its partners played a leading role in the passing of an EU Parliament Resolution on 5 July 2012 condemning Israel’s practice of forced displacement against Palestinian Arabs in the Occupied Territory (West Bank and East Jerusalem) and in the Naqab (Negev) in Israel. This resolution is “particularly noteworthy” because it linked the policy of forced displacement on both sides of the Green Line.^[14]

October 2000 and the Or Commission

In October 2000, Israeli security forces used live ammunition and rubber-coated bullets against Palestinian Arab citizens at demonstrations, killing 13 people. A Commission of Inquiry was established and Adalah represented the family members of the 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel killed by the police, and the Arab political leaders who received warnings from the Commission. “Without Adalah, there would be no Or Commission,” says Hassan Jabareen. “They had no chance to get to the truth.”^[15]

The Or Commission found that there was no justification whatsoever for the excessive use of lethal forced that caused the deaths of 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel. It found that in October 2000 snipers were used to disperse demonstrations for the first time since 1948, and that this sniper fire, which led to the death and injury of citizens, was illegal and certainly not grounded in the internal regulations of the police governing the use of live fire. Similarly, the Or Commission determined that the firing of rubber-coated steel bullets, which produced fatal results, was also contrary to the internal police.^[16]

The Or Commission report also found a pattern of government “prejudice and neglect” towards the Arab-Israeli minority. The Commission stated that Israeli establishment insensitivity had allowed widespread discrimination against Arab citizens leading to the “combustible atmosphere” that led to the riots. In conclusion the Commission said that Israel “must educate its police that the Arab public is not the enemy, and should not be treated as such.”^[17]

“Adalah’s role was significant for the Commission’s work, since individual witnesses did not trust the Commission and did not come forward when the announcement of its work was published into the Arab press.”^[15]

Despite the Or Commission finding that there was no legal justification for using deadly force, not a single member of the security forces has been indicted for the killings. Adalah has continued to call for accountability for the October 2000 killings and justice for the victims and families affected.

The Democratic Constitution

In 2007, Adalah issued “The Democratic Constitution” as a constitutional proposal for the State of Israel, based on the concept of a democratic, bilingual,multicultural state. The Constitution “draws on universal principles and international conventions on human rights, the experiences of nations and the constitutions of various democratic states.”^[18]

The Constitution was drafted in response to intensive discussions taking place in the Knesset concerning a constitution for Israel.

Other documents published by Arab leaders and academics at that time include: the “Future Vision for the Palestinian Arabs in Israel” and the “Haifa Covenant”.

Unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab (Negev)

By the 1990s, there were about 45 Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab (Negev) that were not officially recognized by the state, even though many of these villages had existed before the state’s establishment or residents were moved there by the state itself during the 1950s. Because of their “unrecognized” status, these villages do not receive basic services such as water, healthcare, schools, safe roads and others.

Since the organization’s founding, the unrecognized villages have been among Adalah’s main targets for legal intervention and defence of human rights. “Adalah campaigned for residents to be allowed to use their village’s name on their ID card, thus giving their dwelling place some official recognition. The particular village which Adalah chose as a case, Husseniya, was eventually added to the list of recognized villages after a long struggle.”^[19]

In December 1997, Adalah represented 12 of the largest unrecognized villages in the Negev“in a demand for the establishment of basic medical clinics”, where mothers and children seeking treatment had to travel long distances with no public transportation in order to access a health facility. The Bedouin villages in the Naqab have the highest rate of infant mortality in the country as well as the lowest level of immunization.^[20]

By the mid-2000s, through the combined efforts of Adalah and other organizations and leaders, ten of the 45 villages were accepted by the state as being “in the process of recognition”. However, the state has largely procrastinated in providing the full services entailed by that recognition. Adalah continues to pressure the government to fulfill its commitments to these villages.

The Prawer-Begin Plan

Since 2011, one of Adalah’s top legal priorities and public campaigns has been to stop the implementation of the “Law for the Regulation of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev” (the “Prawer-Begin Plan”).^[21] According to human rights groups, the Plan will oversee the demolitions of 35 unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Naqab and the forced relocation of 40,000-70,000 Bedouin citizens to recognized townships.^[22]

Adalah is representing several villages before the courts to challenge their eviction and demolition orders, including the villages of Umm el-Hieran and Atir, which are to be destroyed to build a Jewish town and a forest on their locations respectively. Adalah regularly submits petitions and letters in partnership with other NGOs and civil society groups, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom, the Negev Co-Existence Forum, and the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages.

Adalah also launched a public campaign “I Am Invisible Because You Refuse to See Me”,^[23] and has produced posters, videos, fact sheets, position papers, and other materials to raise awareness and opposition to the Prawer-Begin Plan.

Impact

Pappe argues that Adalah has “transformed the public discourse on the Palestinians in Israel. It contributed to protecting, through legal means, their right to their own narrative and collective memory. And, more importantly, Adalah…clarified the distinction between an immigrant community (the conventional Jewish description of the Palestinians in Israel) and an indigenous people to whose land an alien state immigrated.”^[7]

Peleg and Waxman say that Adalah and other Palestinian NGOs in Israel have “come to play an important role in the empowerment and development of Palestinian society in Israel. The mushrooming of Palestinian NGOs in Israel…represents another way in which Palestinian citizens of Israel are attempting to change the status quo. Although the goals of some of these NGOs (such as those involved in drafting the Vision documents) may seem radical to many Israeli Jews, their methods are certainly not.”^[12]

Current Cases

Among many others, Adalah is currently involved in the following legal cases:

• Representing Arab MK Mohammed Barakeh (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality - Hadash) on a criminal indictment charging him with four alleged offenses of assaulting or insulting police officers resulting from his participation in anti-Wall and anti-War demonstrations between 2005 and 2007. The court accepted Adalah's arguments concerning parliamentary immunity, and dismissed two of four charges in 10/11.^[24]

• Representing residents of Al-Araqib and human rights activists on criminal indictments related to protest activities concerning the repeated demolition of the Arab Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in the Naqab.^[24]

• Demanding the cancellation of an Israel Land Administration (ILA) policy permitting the marketing and allocation of Jewish National Fund (JNF)-controlled lands by the ILA through bids open only to Jewish Individuals.^[25]

• Seeking the cancellation of evacuation lawsuits against about 1,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the unrecognized village of Atir-Umm el-Hieran in the Naqab and demanding its recognition by the state.^[25]

• Petitioning the Supreme Court on behalf of Gaza residents and Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations challenging the ban on Palestinian residents of Gaza from entering Israel to access the courts for tort damages cases filed against the Israeli security forces. The state’s prevention of entry is resulting in the dismissal of hundreds of compensation lawsuits. In effect, the state is exempting itself from all damages claims.^[26]

External links

• Adalah, Official website (English)
• Official facebook page (English)
• Adalah's Campaign Page against the Prawer Plan, "I Am Invisible Because You Refuse to See Me
• Adalah's "Discriminatory Laws Database"

References