A Voice For the Voiceless

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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Israeli-Palestinian Advocacy Group Calls for Immediate Release of Detained Colleague, November 13, 2006

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AdvocacyNet
News Bulletin 86, November 13, 2006
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Jerusalem and Beit Sahour: The Alternative Information Center (AIC) has called for the immediate release of the Palestinian coordinator of its youth program, who has been detained by Israeli forces for over 18 months without being charged, tried or allowed to defend himself.

Ahmad Abu-Haniyeh was arrested at an Israeli checkpoint on May 22, 2005, and placed under administrative detention for six months. The order has been renewed twice and an Israeli military judge will review it for the third time on Sunday. If it is renewed, Mr. Abu-Haniyeh could face another six months in detention.

Mr. Abu-Haniyeh has been adopted as an appeal case by Amnesty International and is supported by the American National Lawyers guild. He is one of at least three known Palestinian human rights workers currently detained by Israel.

The case is particularly significant because AIC is one of the few joint Palestinian-Israeli organizations working for a democratic Palestinian state at a time of separation between Israeli and Palestinian societies. AIC has offices in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem.

AIC – a partner of The Advocacy Project – has lobbied vigorously for Mr. Abu-Haniyeh’s release with Israel and European governments. “We were shocked by his arrest,” said Connie Hackbarth, Advocacy Coordinator for AIC, “just shocked.”

Mr. Abu-Haniyeh headed AIC’s youth program in Beit Sahour, where he organized after-school activities, summer camps and leadership training for young Palestinians. There are few recreational opportunities for Palestinians under 21 in the West Bank.

Mr. Abu-Haniyeh’s group comprised 25 young people, including 16 women. Although they are trying to maintain the program, AIC officials say that activities have fallen off without a coordinator. AIC has continued to pay Mr. Abu-Haniyeh’s salary throughout the last 18 months. The program is funded by Spanish grants.

Six hundred and one Palestinians are currently under administrative detention, including several children, and the practice has been widely condemned as incompatible with international law. Detainees are picked up on the vague charge of being a “threat to security.” While they can appeal against detention, neither they nor their lawyers are shown the evidence against them, and the decision is taken by an Israeli military judge.

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, has described administrative detention as “making a charade out of the entire system of procedural safeguards.”

According to the latest decision on his case, taken on May 15, 2006, Mr. Abu-Haniyeh was detained for “contact with terrorist activists,” which he denies. “They should put him on trial or release him,” said Ms. Hackbarth, from AIC.

AIC has lobbied hard for Mr. Abu-Haniyeh’s release and met recently with a delegation from the EU and with Dutch diplomats in Tel Aviv. Europeans have taken up the case of two other human rights defenders detained by Israel, but shown less interest in Mr. Abu-Haniyeh because AIC is not a mainstream human rights organization.

This is in spite of Mr. Abu-Haniyeh’s adoption by Amnesty International, and a June 9, 2004 decision by the EU to support human rights defenders, which defines the term broadly and excludes only those who “commit or propagate violence.”

AP has sent two interns to work with AIC. This year’s AIC intern, Sarah Sachs, studies at Columbia University.

• AIC is asking for letters to be sent to senior members of the Israeli government. For addresses and emails, visit AIC’s website.
• For Sarah Sachs’s blogs, visit her blog.