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Palestinian women at Qalandiya checkpoint. Photo: Mati Milstein
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Success: Re-opening C19 testing facilities for 150,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem: Following an urgent letter sent on 16 August 2020 about the sharp spike in C19 cases to the Israeli Health Ministry by Adalah, in cooperation with the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, CLALIT Health Services reopened a testing center in Shufat Refugee Camp and committed to reopening another in Kufr Aqab. Testing facilities, opened in April following Adalah’s Supreme Court petition, were closed shortly after.
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Challenging the constitutionality of the “Major Coronavirus Law”: On 9 September 2020 Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a Supreme Court (SCT) petition against the “Major Coronavirus Law”, which grants sweeping emergency powers to the Israeli government. Adalah argued that an extremely expedited process in legislating the law impeded a necessary discussion; that the power granted to the government to declare a state of emergency violates article 38(a) of the Basic Law: The Government; and that the scope of powers given to the government and the Knesset’s marginalization of its own role in decision-making, violate the principles of separation of powers, the rule of law and the principle of legality. The SCT ordered the state to respond in mid-October.
Notably, the SCT dismissed Adalah’s case against the government’s continuous approval of C-19 Emergency Regulations without Knesset oversight, soon after the Major Coronavirus Law was enacted. The Court ruled, five months after the case was filed, that following the passage of the law, the government was now acting in accordance with the law.
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Photo: Israel Police/Facebook
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Seeking the cancellation of all C19 fines: In late July 2020, Adalah petitioned the SCT demanding the cancellation of all fines issued under Emergency Regulations (ERs) during the first wave of the C19 crisis. Israeli police issued 77,000 tickets and fines to citizens for non-compliance with the ERs. Adalah argued that the government acted without legal authority, as these fines were given for criminal and administrative offenses that were not determined by law or confirmed by a Knesset Committee as the law obliges, but were determined solely by government decree. Additionally, the police issued these fines arbitrarily, leading to the selective enforcement of these offenses, which violates the rule of law. Adalah also asked the state to return fines that had already been collected. The state’s response to the petition is due shortly.
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Back to school, protecting the education rights of Arab Bedouin children in the Naqab (Negev): Since mid-March 2020, tens of thousands of Bedouin children were unable to attend school and have had no access to remote learning due to no electricity, internet connections, or computers, particularly in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab. The SCT dismissed our April 2020 petition demanding that the Education Ministry connect Bedouin students to the distance-learning system, as the state declared the re-opening of schools, despite the fact that most Bedouin schools did not and could not reopen. In July 2020, Adalah, on behalf of the Follow-up Committee for Arab Education, sent a letter to Israeli authorities demanding that they take immediate actions to prepare for the upcoming school year to secure access to both remote education and for classroom studies, to help schools meet the Health Ministry’s guidelines. The children returned to school as of 1 September, however, the issues raised remain imminent as the chance of school cancellation for a large part of the fall semester is very high, due to high rates of corona infection.
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Demanding Economic Justice
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Photos: (left) Mitzpe Ilan, an Israeli Jewish town listed as a national priority area; (right) Umm al-Fahm, a neighboring Israeli Arab town, not listed as national priority area
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Demanding equitable development benefits for Arab towns: Adalah, in cooperation with the Arab Center for Alternative Planning and the Public Committee for the Defense of Land and Housing in Wadi Ara, and on behalf of all Arab towns in Wadi Ara and 74 area residents, petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court on 6 August 2020, demanding that the government provide state development benefits to Arab towns at levels enjoyed by neighboring Jewish towns. Arab towns located in the northern Triangle area in Israel suffer from decades of deliberate state discrimination and neglect in the distribution of housing, construction, and land development benefits, compared to the adjacent wealthy and far less crowded Jewish towns. The Arab localities did not receive the “National Priority Area” (NPA) designation that would make them eligible for development and housing benefits and land discounts from the Israel Land Authority, despite a precedent-setting Supreme Court ruling in 2006 on another Adalah petition; in that prior case, the Court rejected the government’s arbitrary determination criteria that discriminated between Arab and Jewish localities in Israel on the basis of ethnicity or national belonging.
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Demanding subsidies for after-school programs in Arab towns: Adalah, on behalf of parents of Arab children and the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education, filed a petition on 6 September 2020 to the SCT demanding subsidies for after-school programs in Arab towns that are part of the Misgav Regional Council (MRC). The MRC, which is comprised of 35 towns, six of which are Arab, has a socio-economic ranking of 7, while the individual Arab towns rank at level 1 or 2, among the poorest in the country. The Education Ministry-run program aims specifically to reduce socio-economic gaps by helping parents with after school assistance. However, the budgeting method leads to an unequal allocation of funding aid as the poorest Arab villages are treated as part of the strong MRC, and consequently the parents are forced to pay participation fees similar to that of the neighboring wealthy Jewish towns. The result is that the families in the six Arab towns cannot afford to participate in the program. Adalah demanded that the Education Ministry change its criteria for state aid by allocating subsidies based on the individual town’s ranking rather than that of the MRC.
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Adalah's General Director, Attorney Hassan Jabareen, named by The Marker (a business daily published by the Ha’aretz Group) as one of 100 top influencers in Israel in 2020:
“Jabareen, as Adalah's director, has led a long series of struggles for the rights of the Arab minority in Israel, utilizing legal tools – first and foremost petitions to the Supreme Court – ranging from political and economic rights to issues of land discrimination, and planning and construction rights ...During its years of activity, Adalah has become a vital player in the public, political, and legal activities of the Arab public in Israel.”
Further information in this Facebook Post
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Mati Milstein, Adalah’s Communications Director & International Media Coordinator, selected as Harvard Divinity School's 2020-21 Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow:
Milstein’s project “will utilize photography to document American Jewish social justice activists, their connections to and actions in Palestine, and the resulting impact upon their cultural and religious identity”.
See Mati Milstein’s Facebook Post
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