Adalah's News: January and February 2020

ADALAH'S NEWS
January and February 2020

Starting off the New Year, Adalah obtained significant achievements in defending the political participation rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, fighting against racial profiling, and getting children back to school and securing access to drinking water in Bedouin villages in the Naqab (Negev). Adalah also weighed in on the Trump Plan, with our opinion cited in high-profile international press.

SPOTLIGHT ON THE ELECTIONS 2020

Members of the Joint List outside Supreme Court

In the run-up to the third elections in less than a year, Adalah represented the Joint List and MK Heba Yazbak before the Central Election Committee (CEC) and MK Yazbak before the Israeli Supreme Court (SCT) against attempts by the Likud and other right-wing parties to disqualify them from running for the Knesset. While the CEC approved the participation of the Joint List, it disqualified MK Yazbak; then, in a sharply divided 5 to 4 decision, the SCT overturned the CEC’s decision and permitted her to run.

Adalah's General Director Dr. Hassan Jabareen in the Supreme Court

The disqualification processes pursued in every election over the last 20 years have one sole purpose: To delegitimize and demonize the political representatives of Palestinian citizens of Israel. These processes, coupled with the frenzied campaigns of incitement launched by various Israeli parties, promote racism, hatred and alienation.

Photo gallery: Facebook

Media Coverage:

Halting Racial Profiling on Public Bus #18

Following a petition to the Supreme Court, Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and other partners succeeded to halt a humiliating procedure of pulling Palestinians off of public buses at an entrance to a major Israeli hospital. Security guards demanded that passengers with an “Arab appearance” present their identification cards, and were forced off the bus if they were not citizens of Israel.

Racial profiling based on national or ethnic identity is a degrading and insulting practice. Labeling individuals as dangerous simply because of their identity is a testament to deep, systemic racism.

Media coverage:

Securing the Right to Go to School and Access to Water for Bedouin in the Naqab

Left: Resident of Khashem Zanneh collects water; Right: Bedouin children going to their school buses

Adalah achieved two successes for Palestinian Bedouin communities living in the Naqab desert. In one case, Adalah’s urgent court petition resulted in the swift resumption of bus services for 2,200 preschool children in 20 villages who had been stuck at home for a month as the Education Ministry failed to transfer funding to the Neve Midbar Regional Council. In another case, Adalah’s legal intervention led to the reconnection of the water supply for 400 Bedouin residents of Khashem Zanneh. In October 2019, the Water Authority cut the water to a connection point that serves the villagers, claiming that they had not paid their bills; in fact, the local representative had not transferred the money.

The Israeli authorities’ failure to provide transport to school for Bedouin children constitutes a serious violation of the right to education. The state continues to deprive thousands of Bedouin citizens of access to drinking water, even though it is a fundamental, constitutional right

The Trump Plan – A Racially-Motivated Form of Demographic Engineering

As appears in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,October 2017, pp. 7-9

Following the release of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century”, Adalah issued a statement warning that the plan’s proposal to redraw Israel’s borders to leave over 260,0000 Palestinian Arab citizens of the state living in 10 towns in the Triangle region within a future enclave of Palestine, constitutes forcible transfer. In addition to the suggested “population transfer”, many aspects of the plan are of grave concern to Adalah, resembling policies of South Africa’s Apartheid government in place between 1948 and 1994, including: the illegal annexation of massive swaths of the occupied West Bank; the recognition of historic Palestine as the homeland of the Jewish people only; and the denial of both recognition for Palestinians’ right of self-determination, and for the right of return for the Palestinian refugees.

The deal is no more than a joint US-Israel effort to bypass international legal barriers and impose the Israeli government’s vision for its territory in flagrant violation of international law

Media coverage:

Palestinians say Trump's deal is racist. But their leaders are bereft of ideas on how to fight it, CNN
Buried in Trump’s peace plan, a proposal that could strip thousands of Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, Washington Post
Facing a Palestinian state, Arab Israelis find Trump's Mideast plan unworkable, NBC News
Anger at Trump Plan Could Mobilize Arab Voters in Israel, AP/ Haaretz

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