Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel / English

Follow our project with the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University!

New writings from Noura Erakat, Randa Wahbe, Suhad Bishara and more!

Friends in New York this weekend, join Adalah and our colleagues from Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal tomorrow for our panel at the Left Forum - "The Transatlantic Slippery Slope - Suppression of Freedom of Expression from Israel to the US"

A roundtable of thoughts with Hassan Jabareen, Suhad Bishara, and Katherine Franke on the themes raised by the Nakba and the Law project.

Adalah's Acting General Director Suhad Bishara describes in The Nakba Files how Israeli law and court rulings allowed the state to confiscate the lands of Palestinian citizens from the villages of Ar'ara and al-Lajun:

"These cases were not merely legal defeats. By silencing any form of legal reasoning, they were also acts of erasure, denying the validity of Palestinian narratives and Palestinian history in order to safeguard Zionist structures of sovereignty, territoriality, and property. They are reminders of how the Nakba persists in Israel's legal system."

New post in The Nakba Files about the expansion of the Israeli settlement of Ramot over the lands of two Palestinian villages:

"The story of Beit Iksa and Lifta in the shadow of Ramot illustrates the three ways of thinking about the Nakba...There is the Nakba as historical event, with the expulsion of Lifta’s people in 1948; there is Nakba as an ongoing process of dispossession, as we see with the recent moves to build on these lands; and there is Nakba as structure, with spatial categories such as the Green Line, 'Greater Jerusalem,' and 'Area B' together allowing the law to both enact inequality and to justify itself in doing so."

The UN Committee Against Torture raised numerous issues highlighted by human rights organizations – including Adalah, Al Mezan, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – in its concluding observations as matters of grave concern.

Read our summary of the Committee's main issues and recommendations.

Spread the word!

Welcome to the site of our new project with the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University!

The Nakba Files is dedicated to exploring the interplay between the Nakba and the law, using fresh analyses to shed light on how Palestinian displacement and dispossession continues to be perpetuated by legal systems and tools.

Find out more on the site!

Adalah and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University are proud to launch "The Nakba Files," a new site that will act as a space — part notebook, part case file, part seminar — to explore the various dimensions of how the Nakba and the law come together.

We will share regular blog posts from contributors as they examine how the consequences of the Nakba continue to reverberate through the legal systems of Israel/Palestine, and will include a combination of field reports, analyses of legal materials, and discussions of recent scholarship on the topic.

Like the Facebook page and stay tuned to our posts!

The fate of the village of Atir–Umm al-Hiran illustrates that the Palestinian Nakba did not end with the war of 1948. It in fact continues to this day, threatening to displace and dispossess thousands of Palestinians even when they hold Israeli citizenship.

Support the struggle now – before we are forced to commemorate ‪#‎NakbaDay‬ over the village's ruins.

Join the campaign to ‪#‎Save_UmAlHiran‬: www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8550

Israeli police and inspectors arrived at Atir–Umm al-Hiran today to take photos of the villagers' homes. The threat of immediate demolition is increasing. ‪#‎Save_UmAlHiran‬

For more info: http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8550

Amira Hass reviews ‪#‎ThereIsAField‬, linking the similar experiences and struggles of black Americans and Palestinian citizens:

"To the American audience this [story] sounded like one of the outrageous judicial decisions that set off the protest wave of recent years and spawned the Black Lives Matter movement. But the play ... tells the story of Aseel Aslih, a 17-year-old from the town of Arabeh ... who Israeli police officers killed during the demonstrations of October 2000."

Haaretz.com reports on the dire state of preschool education in unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Naqab, and cites a new petition filed by Adalah and the residents of Alsira demanding those basic services.

Our petition stated that "Revoking the demolition orders [against Alsira in May 2014] necessarily implies recognition of the villagers' rights to at least basic, vital services, such as access to education, especially since the state is obliged to provide free education."

A court hearing on the petition will be held on 25 May: www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8793

Adalah's Amjad Iraqi writes in +972 Magazine about why an anti-torture law currently being drafted by Israel's Justice Ministry is unlikely to help those most targeted by the practice – the Palestinians:

"...torture in Israel is not an irregularity – it is a system backed by legal machinery and driven by a political goal: to control an occupied population. Until the government has a serious discussion about dismantling that system in its entirety, we should not hold our breath over one law that officials claim will fix it."

This week in Geneva, the UN Committee Against Torture held its review of Israel's compliance with its obligations to end the practice of torture and ill-treatment. The Committee will issue its concluding observations next Friday 13 May.

Adalah, Al Mezan and PHR-I attended the session and followed the Israeli delegation's responses to the Committee's questions on various topics. We put together a few highlights of the delegation's statements, and made brief critiques of each one.

Read them here: www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8794

HAPPENING NOW: Adalah Attorneys Suhad Bishara (right) and Nadeem Shehadeh (left) in the Israeli Supreme Court, attending a hearing to demand the release of the body of 16-year-old Palestinian minor Mu'taz Ewisat. Ewisat was shot and killed by Israeli police in October 2015, who to this day have refused to return his body to his family for burial.

For info: http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8786

Day 2 of the UN Committee Against Torture's review of Israel in Geneva! Adalah here together with Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (רופאים לזכויות אדם - ישראל), الضمير لرعاية الأسير Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq Organization مؤسسة الحق, and Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS).

Stay tuned for a summary of the review session and our takes on Israel's responses to the Committee's questions regarding its compliance with the Convention Against Torture.