The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is a Ramallah based Palestinian non-profit organization that was established in 1986 to improve the performance and professionalism of Palestinian farmers. The Union also aims to help Palestinian farmers market their produce and provides agricultural employment opportunities through a framework of cooperation with domestic, Arab, and international agricultural development institutions.[2]
In 1993, UAWC developed its organizational structure, consisting of a general assembly, board of trustees, general director, and two executive directors; one for the West Bank and one for the Gaza Strip.[5]
UAWC initially focused on forming Agricultural Cooperatives and Committees in the different Palestinian rural areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[6]
In 2021, it was designated as a terrorist organization along with 5 other NGOs (Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defence for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees), by the Israeli government.[8] The designation was condemned by UN and human rights organizations and on 23 February 2022, France, in a statement to the United Nations Security Council, said that "In the absence of evidence, France will continue to support these organisations."[9][10] In July 2022, nine EU countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden) issued a joint statement saying they will continue working with the six Palestinian organisations that Israel had banned because Israel had failed to prove that they should be considered terrorist groups.[11]
On 18 August 2022, Israeli forces raided the headquarters of the six organisations along with the Union of Health Work Committees (outlawed in 2020) in Ramallah and al-Bireh, removed computers and equipment and ordered their closure.[12][13][14])
In February 2012, the Israeli law organization Shurat HaDin alleged that UAWC was a front for PFLP and that WVA and AusAID were providing financial aid to PFLP. Letters sent to these organizations warned them that they were "personally, criminally and civilly liable under Australian and US law" which could include "liability for future terrorist attacks carried out by the PFLP."[15] A spokesperson for WVA said that there was no evidence to support the allegations but that WVA had suspended its dealings with UAWC pending the outcome of an investigation into the matter.[15] UAWC denied that it had any links to PFLP.[16]
WVA and AusAID resumed working with UAWC after an investigation into the allegations found them baseless.[16] Shurat HaDin, however, continued to threaten legal action against WVA.[16] In a letter to Shurat HaDin, WVA described its allegations as unsubstantiated and in some cases defamatory.[16]
In 2022 Netherlands stopped the funding over alleged ties with PFLP as it found that 12 employers of the organization were part of the PFLP leadership.[17]
Affiliate of PFLP
UAWC building
In July 2020, the Dutch government announced that it had suspended funding to UAWC over allegations that it has links to PFLP. The allegations came from the Israeli NGO Monitor, a group that examines nongovernmental organizations involved in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. According to the allegations, UAWC has used money to pay two men Israel accuses of carrying out a bombing in the West Bank that killed an Israeli teen named Rina Shnerb.[18][19]
In October 2021, the UAWC was designated a terrorist organization by Israel, together with five other Palestinian non-profit, non-governmental organizations.[20] The designation was condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,[21] and the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights who called it a "frontal attack on the Palestinian human rights movement and on human rights everywhere."[22] Israel citing alleged ties to PFLP as the reason.[23] The designation applies within Israel but not in the West Bank.[24]
Awards and honours
UAWC won the Food Sovereignty Prize in October 2014[25] which is awarded by the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, an American NGO established to mobilize and educate US and international activists on the "food crisis".
In November 2014, the UAWC won the Equator Prize for its role in sustainable development and fight against poverty through its Seed Bank project initiative.[26] The award was given by the United Nations Development Agency (UNDP) in New York.
↑ Hagar Shezaf: תשע מדינות באירופה: בהיעדר ראיות מישראל, נמשיך לסייע לארגונים האזרחיים בגדה / 'Insufficient Evidence': Nine EU Nations to Keep Ties With Palestinian NGOs Israel Blacklisted as Terrorist Groups. Haaretz, 12July 2022.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command or PFLP-GC is a Palestinian nationalist militant organisation based in Syria. It is a member the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The Palestinian NGOs Network is a non-profit, non-governmental organization with a mandate to protect the environment of Palestine by acting as a coordinating body for Palestinian environmental organizations located in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. PNGON was initiated after the 2000 al-Aqsa Intifada due to heightened demands for Palestinian environmental organizations to defend the Palestinian environment.
Defence for Children International (DCI) is an international non-governmental organisation (INGO) set up in 1979, during the International Year of the Child, to ensure on-going, practical, systematic and concerted international and national action specially directed towards promoting and protecting the rights of children, as articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Nigel Cantwell was one of its founders and its current president is Khaled Quzmar of Palestine.
Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.
Khalida Jarrar is a Palestinian politician. She is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). She was elected to the PLC in January 2006 as one of the PFLP's three deputies and has continued to serve as an elected representative ever since. She is also the Palestinian representative on the Council of Europe and is currently head of the Prisoners Committee of the PLC. She played a major role in Palestine's application to join the International Criminal Court.
World Vision Australia (WVA) is an ecumenical Christian non-governmental organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. It is a part of the World Vision International Partnership led by World Vision International. WVA is Australia's largest overseas aid and development organisation, operating primarily to assist overseas communities living in poverty. It also carries out development work in Australia with First Nations communities.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the State of Palestine:
Shurat HaDin, also Israel Law Center (ILC), is an Israeli non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in Tel Aviv in 2003. Shurat HaDin has been described as a civil rights organization. However, it has also been accused of pro-Israel lawfare.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner is an Israeli attorney, human rights activist, and the founder of Shurat HaDin – Israeli Law Center. As the president of the Shurat HaDin, she has represented hundreds of terror victims in legal actions against terror organizations and their supporters. Darshan-Leitner initiated a legal campaign to deprive terrorists of social media resources such as Facebook and Twitter. Darshan-Leitner assisted in blocking the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
The future of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is considered central to progress in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Cases of prison sentences include the charges of terrorism or being a member of an "illegal terrorist organization", such as Hamas or prior to the Oslo Accords the Palestine Liberation Organization, but according to some accounts also by political activism such as raising a Palestinian flag.
Shawan Rateb Abdallah Jabarin is the general director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. From 2005 to 2009, Jabarin was a member of the board of directors of Defense for Children International – Palestine, the national section of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, an non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 1979.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967 by George Habash. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization, the largest being Fatah.
Al-Haq is a Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization based in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Founded in 1979, Al-Haq monitors and documents human rights violations committed by parties to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, issuing reports on its findings and producing detailed legal studies. It is in special consultative status with ECOSOC since 2000.
On 31 July 2015, Israeli settlers firebombed a Palestinian family home in late July 2015 in the village of Duma, killing three people; 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned alive in the fire, while both his parents died from their injuries within weeks. On 3 January 2016, 21 year old Israeli settler Amiram Ben-Uliel was indicted for the murder, along with an Israeli minor, for participation in planning the murder. In addition, along with two others, they were both charged with one count of membership in a terrorist organization.
On 23 August 2019, 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb was killed by a roadside bomb while hiking with her father, Rabbi Eitan Shnerb, and brother Dvir near Dolev, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank; her father and brother were wounded. Shnerb's funeral was held in Lod on 23 August.
The Palestinian NGOs Network is an umbrella organization of about 30 Palestinian non-government organisations (NGOs) in the Palestinian territories formed to enhance coordination, consultation and cooperation between member NGOs and to strengthen Palestinian civil society and contribute to the establishment of a Palestinian state. PNGO was formed in September 1993, and as of January 2020, had 135 member NGOs operating in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Addameer, officially Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, is a Palestinian NGO based in Ramallah.
The Union of Palestinian Women's Committees is a Palestinian non-profit organization founded in 1980 "to empower Palestinian women on all levels and to contribute in the Palestinian national struggle against the Israeli military illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories".
The Bisan Center for Research and Development is a civil society non-profit, non-governmental organization in Ramallah, Palestine. It was established in 1989 and is registered with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior.
On 19 October 2021, Israel designated six Palestinian human rights organizations—Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees—as terrorist organizations. After the ban, an Israeli official told American media that arrests of the organizations' leadership was not being pursued, the goal was to cut off funding for the targeted groups. Although the ban was justified on the basis that the organizations had links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, no evidence for such links has been made public by Israel.
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