Articles for Palestine

Alkarama and forty Arab human rights organizations have issued a joint statement condemning what they qualified as "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against the residents of the Gaza Strip.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Volker Türk, warned of the repercussions of collective punishment imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinians in Gaza and the targeting of civilians, stressing that bitter experiences have shown that "vengeance is not the answer, and ultimately innocent civilians pay the price." 

In a joint statement, United Nations human rights experts condemned the forced eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem, and considered this as the spark that ignited the fuse of an all-out war.

Two UN human rights experts called on Israel to immediately stop using military security tools to "obstruct the legitimate work of human rights defenders". This follows a decision by the Israeli military court on January 6, 2021 to convict Palestinian human rights activist Issa Amro on six counts related to his human rights activities between 2010 and 2016.

On July 23, 2019, Alkarama wrote to the UN Special Rapporteur on Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 and the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing to ask them to urge the Israeli authorities to call on the Israeli authorities to immediately halt the destruction of houses near the Annexation Wall.

(Geneva, September 20, 2018) – On September 20, 2018, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was released from Damoun prison after serving a five-month sentence for “incitement to violence” and “support for terror organisations” in relation to her poetry and social media activity.

(Geneva, August 3, 2018) – On July 31, 2018, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was sentenced by an Israeli court to five months in prison with an additional six-month suspended sentence on charges of “incitement to violence” and “support for terror organisations” as a result of her poetry and social media activity.

(Geneva, July 6, 2018) – On June 29, 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) met to adopt the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) outcome of Israel following the state’s review on January 23, 2018.

 

“A poem stands accused,

my poem morphs into a crime.

In the land of freedom,

the artist’s fate is prison.”

 

Extract from “A Poet Behind Bars” by Dareen Tatour, translated by Tariq al Haydar

On October 17, 2017, Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender, Shireen Issawi, was released from an Israeli prison after being arbitrarily detained for over three and a half years.

Issawi was arrested along with her brothers, Shadi and Medhat, in March 2014, and accused of “cooperating with actors working against Israel.” Her arrest came as part of a crackdown by the Israeli authorities on lawyers who had defended Palestinian prisoners.