Adalah Briefs Embassy Representatives from 17 Countries on Legal Developments in 2006

On 22 November 2006, Adalah held a briefing on legal developments in 2006 for representatives of embassies in Israel at the Heinrich B?ll Foundation in Tel Aviv. Ambassadors and political officers from 17 countries participated in the briefing including: the United States, Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, the Delegation of the European Commission, Egypt, Finland, Chile, Switzerland, Norway, Croatia, Japan and Mexico.

Attorney Hassan Jabareen, the General Director of Adalah, and Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara presented major cases of discrimination and other human rights violations against Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians under occupation on which Adalah has worked during the past year. They urged the embassy representatives to raise these issues as crucial causes of concern with their governments and with the government of Israel in order to defend and secure the rights of Palestinians in Israel and in the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs). They also called upon the participants to protest the joining of Avigdor Lieberman, who advocates for the transfer of Arab citizens of Israel, to the government.

Attorney Hassan Jabareen focused his presentation on Adalah's demand for an investigation into the Ministry of Justice's Police Investigation Unit (“Mahash”) for breach of trust and damaging public confidence for its failures to investigate and criminally prosecute police officers and commanders responsible for the killings of 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel and the injury of hundreds of others in October 2000. He also discussed key Supreme Court judgments delivered in 2006, including the decision to narrowly uphold the racist Citizenship Law which bans family unification, and the upcoming decision on the law which exempts Israel from paying compensation to Palestinians killed or injured by the Israeli military in the OPTs. He also noted a landmark decision delivered earlier this year in which the Supreme Court, after eight years of litigation, cancelled a long standing governmental socio-economic plan (“the National Priorities List”) on the basis that it discriminates against Arab citizens of Israel. In addition, he emphasized the importance and implications of two cases brought by Adalah and currently pending before the Supreme Court: an appeal by Haifa University of a District Court decision ruling that the university's use of the military service criterion in allocating student housing on campus discriminates against Arab students; and a petition challenging the government's discriminatory war compensation scheme for businesses and organizations damaged during the war in the summer of 2006.

Attorney Suhad Bishara discussed Adalah's recent land and planning cases, particularly in the Naqab, where the government has stepped up efforts to re-locate and concentrate the Arab Bedouin in government-planned towns and to encourage intensive Jewish settlement of the remaining area. She highlighted Adalah's pending Supreme Court petition which seeks the annulment of the “Wine Path Plan” for the establishment of 30 “individual settlements” in the Naqab, which would effectively make thousands of dunams of land available solely to Jewish citizens. She also presented Adalah's challenges to the state's misuse of the planning and building laws through the filing of ex parte requests to demolish the homes of hundreds of families in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab. These requests have been automatically granted by the courts, based solely on the state's false representations that the identities of the homeowners are unknown. Attorney Suhad Bishara also gave explanations for the fact that approximately 80% of the land in Israel is inaccessible to Arab citizens of the state, including the Jewish National Fund's holding of 13% of the land solely for the benefit of Jewish citizens, as well as the Israel Land Administration's decision to implement discriminatory selection criteria for accepting candidates to agricultural and community towns.