On behalf of the Adalah team, we wish you and your families a happy, healthy holiday and New Year. Thank you for all your support and encouragement in 2020, a year like no other for all of us.
Over the last year, Adalah litigated major emergency COVID-19 cases which resulted in many positive outcomes that improved the lives of Palestinians, including access to COVID-19 testing, a halt to home demolitions, economic support, and protections for civil liberties. We undertook this large body of work alongside our regular caseload, which also resulted in several successes including positive Supreme Court rulings in the Settlements Regularization Law case, and in the elections’ disqualification case against MK Dr. Heba Yazbak of the Joint List. Adalah also secured the provision of essential services for Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Naqab (Negev) desert including water connections for 400 villagers and the resumption of bus transport for 2,000 children to their preschools. Adalah is deeply proud of these accomplishments, which would not have been possible without your ongoing, generous support.
Click Here to view a slideshow of Adalah’s Achievements in 2020.
These successes were achieved in the face of mounting challenges, including the government’s attempts to annex vast swaths of the West Bank, and to consistently neglect Palestinian citizens of Israel in its COVID-19 response measures by denying them equal protections.
It is increasingly likely that we will see yet another round of Israeli national elections in 2021, the fourth in the last two years, and the formation of an even further right-wing ruling coalition. Other challenges may include renewed attempts to forcibly displace Bedouin communities in the Naqab in southern Israel, as the government begins to implement a number of major new economic development plans located on Bedouin land, and to further concentrate them in a small number of crowded and impoverished towns.
The state is additionally pursuing plans to establish new Israeli Jewish towns on Bedouin land, in line with the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which gives constitutional backing to the state to establish exclusively Jewish towns and to consolidate Jewish demographic majorities throughout Israel. The Jewish Nation-State Basic Law has already begun to appear in Israeli case law and in the plans of key government ministries. Adalah will argue against the law on behalf of the Palestinian political leadership in Israel at an Israeli Supreme Court hearing before an expanded panel of 11 justices on 22 December 2020. The court will hear Adalah's petition as well as 14 others.
