Adalah’s emergency legal representation of Palestinian protestors in Israel
For the past week and half, Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) have taken to the streets in protests in Arab towns and Jewish-Arab cities in Israel, against recent violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and inside Israel. The overall response of the Israeli police and other forces has been extremely violent, and aimed at aggressively dispersing the demonstrations and cracking down on the rights to freedom of expression, protest and assembly.
Hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested and detained during these demonstrations.
Adalah’s lawyers, together with dozens of volunteer lawyers, have worked throughout the current period of emergency to provide legal advice to detained protestors, and to represent them before Israeli courts at extension of detention hearings and on appeal. Many lawyers volunteered to represent protestors and detainees throughout the country, and Adalah staff gave legal support to them for work in the police stations and in the courts in different locations. Adalah has also filed complaints and other legal interventions against unlawful actions by Israeli police forces, including using excessive violence against protestors, denying or delaying their access to medical treatment for injured protestors.
Adalah’s legal work on behalf of detained protestors have included:
Following the Israeli police’s violent repression of a Palestinian protest in Haifa on 9 May 2021, Adalah called on the Israeli Justice Ministry’s Police Investigations Department (PID or Mahash) to open an immediate investigation into the conduct of officers at the protest in the city's German Colony neighborhood. Videos Adalah sent with the letter clearly indicate that Israeli police violently dispersed the protest without legal justification and without the protestors having themselves first acted in a violent matter. Adalah legal teams provided overnight legal support to volunteer lawyers, who stayed at police stations assisting Palestinian citizens of Israel who were arrested during the evening's protest in Haifa.
Following the demonstration, Israeli police refused to provide or allow evacuation for urgent medical care for four of the detainees wounded during the course of their arrests. Adalah sent requests to the police to demand access to medical care for these protestors and to document the violations, and we will follow-up in this matter at a systemic level with a legal letter to the authorities.
On 10 May 2021, Adalah, together with volunteer lawyers, successfully obtained the release of 9 detained protestors following court hearings; while seven people were released directly from the police station.
On 10 May 2021, Israeli police delayed the entry of lawyers into the Nazareth Police Station to meet with detained protesters being held there. Adalah wrote a letter to the Commander of the station, demanding that the lawyers be given access to the protestors and that the latter’s fundamental rights to receive legal counsel prior to a police investigation be upheld, following which, the lawyers were allowed to enter the station.
On 11 May 2021, the Haifa Magistrates’ Court released four minors, with varying restrictive conditions, including house arrest and financial guarantees. Adalah represented the four minors before the court, who were charged with various offenses related to their exercise of the right to protest.
On 12 May 2021, Adalah sent an urgent letter to the Israeli Attorney General and to the Director of Israel’s Shin Bet Internal Security Agency, demanding that they act to halt the agency’s reported practice of sending threatening text messages to Palestinian citizens of Israel for their alleged participation in violent events at the Al Asqa mosque compound.
On 15 May 2021, Haifa Magistrates Court accepted Adalah’s appeal and canceled the Haifa Police Commander’s decision to ban four residents of Haifa from the city for a period of 15 days. Israeli police arrested the youths during a protest in Haifa on 9 May 2021, and released them from custody the next day under the terms of a police order preventing them from remaining in the city, despite the fact that they are residents of Haifa.
