In the case of the refugees trapped on the Israeli border, as in the matter of hunger striking prisoner Khader Adnan, Israel’s highest court wriggled out of a decision, escaping the shackles of democracy and international law that are supposed to guide its work.

Former Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan (3rd from left) in a Nablus demonstration in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners still on hunger strike. (photo by: Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills.org)

Last February, a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail was on the verge of death, more than two months into a hunger strike he had launched in protest of his administrative detention order under Israeli military law. On Sunday, February 19, the High Court of Justice agreed to hear Khader Adnan’s petition against the order – and scheduled the hearing for five days later, the following Thursday. The date came as a surprise, as it was clear that Adnan might not make it that long. Indeed, as his condition rapidly deteriorated, the High Court agreed to move the hearing up by two days. But before it could rule on the petition, which challenged the entire administrative detention system, the state struck a deal with Adnan’s attorneys, securing his agreement to call off his strike in exchange for a guaranteed release two months later.

Yesterday marked the end of a saga that saw 21 Eritrean asylum seekers stranded for seven days behind a fence on the Israel-Egypt border in the scorching desert sun. They had all made the harrowing journey through Sinai, likely enduring the horrors of notorious torture camps run by human smugglers in the desert peninsula. The Israeli soldiers stationed on the border were instructed to give the asylum seekers little water and no food, and aid workers were refused access to them. Refugee rights organizations petitioned the High Court of Justice to demand Israel adhere to principles of international refugee law and allow the asylum seekers entry to submit their refugee claims. The High Court heard the petition on Thursday, but decided to wait until Sunday to hand down its decision, leaving the group languishing in the desert. But several hours later, the state announced it had reached a “deal” with the asylum seekers, whereby

They navigate the racetrack, Palestinian society, competition in a male dominated sport, and a military occupation. But “outside the car is one thing. Inside the car is another world.” So begins the trailer for a documentary in the works that tracks the lives of five women race car drivers – Palestine’s own “Speed Sisters.”

Betty Saadeh, Maysoon Jayyusi, Noor Daoud, Marah Zahalka, and Mouna Ennab make up a team of Palestinian women competing against men and one another in monthly autocross races in the West Bank city of Jericho. Their lives are documented in “Speed Sisters,” a film directed by Amber Fares.

Fares, a Canadian filmmaker living in Ramallah, met the women when she was tapped to make short films about them for a British Consulate project. Those films have turned into what will be a full-length documentary. Fares hasn’t finished filming, but her movie has already generated substantial online buzz and has been picked up by Bungalow Town Productions, a prominent British documentary film company. A grassroots donation campaign was recently launched to bring the film into post-production, and funding from high profile film foundations is on the horizon. If all goes according to plan, the film will be released in the fall of 2013.

From left: Mouna, Noor, Maysoon, Marah, Betty

The Speed Sisters range in age from 21 to 34, and hail from all over the West Bank. Two grew up abroad, like Betty, 31, who was born in Mexico and returned to Palestine with her family during the Oslo period. (She is also the only Speed Sister to enjoy corporate sponsorship, from Peugeot.) Others, like Marah, 21, have spent their lives in Palestine. Maysoon, 34, an UNRWA employee from Ramallah, manages the group and is also an occasional racer. They all enjoy support from their families for what some – inside and outside the West Bank – may consider an unorthodox or unacceptable passion for women. (Marah, in fact, developed her taste for the road as a child, listening from the backseat as her mother, a driving instructor, gave lessons.)

Not just any hobby 

In the West Bank, driving and racing evoke more than a means of transport or a fast and furious hobby. The military occupation that controls...

Among the hundreds of South Sudanese slated for deportation is a group of children who have been removed from their parents’ custody due to severe domestic violence. The authorities have not taken steps to ensure their protection, and they risk not only immediate deportation, but a forced return to abusive families.

South Sudanese victims of child abuse who have been removed from the custody of their parents by Israeli welfare services are being targeted for deportation along with their families.

Yedioth Ahronoth reported today that immigration authorities arrived this week at several boarding schools at which South Sudanese refugee children were placed following court orders separating them from abusive parents. In one case, the authorities attempted to remove two panicked young girls – sisters who had reportedly suffered severe abuse at the hands of their father – but were stopped by school administrators upon consultation with local Welfare Ministry representatives.

In another case, a boy was removed from his boarding school and returned to the custody of his parents, without the involvement of welfare representatives. A Ministry of Interior spokesperson claimed the boy was not in the care of welfare services, but had resided in the boarding school upon his parents’ request. She told +972 that he would not be deported without a welfare assessment. However, he is now in Saharonim detention center with his family – all of them in deportation proceedings.

Roughly 20 South Sudanese children – belonging to 10 or so families – have been removed from their homes upon court order, as a result of child abuse. When the government announced several months ago its intention to deport all of the South Sudanese nationals residing in Israel, refugee advocates appealed to the Ministry of Interior on behalf of the children and their families, requesting it stay their deportation pending the conclusion of family treatment.

The MOI spokeswoman told +972, however, that the ministry has no list of the children in question, and that immigration officials went to the boarding schools “randomly” after they arrested South Sudanese parents who told them they could not fly without their children. She also said that the deportation of children removed from their parents’ care would be examined by welfare authorities on a case-to-case basis. A representative from the Aid Organization for Refugees, however, told +972 that she had been contacted by welfare officials asking her “what to do,” raising concerns of...

Next month, the Palestinian non-violent resistance movement will take center stage at an art gallery in New Mexico. Mati Milstein, an Israeli photojournalist, has spent the last year documenting the activities of a group of women activists fighting the occupation. He discusses “Nesa’iyéh (a woman thing),” his exhibition of their struggle as depicted through his lens, in an interview with Noa Yachot. 

How did you get involved in the project?

I was in downtown Ramallah on March 15, 2011, photographing Palestinian demonstrations calling for unity between disparate political factions. I noticed that many of the protest leaders were, in fact, women. Though I did take note of this unusual fact, it initially remained filed somewhere in the back of my head. As the following weeks passed and I continued to photograph Palestinian protests in the West Bank, I realized I was seeing the same women – week after week – that I had seen at that protest in Ramallah.

I began talking to them, trying to get a grasp of this new and unusual image (at least new and unusual to me) of women leading men in Palestinian street protests. Eventually described by the international media as the “March 15th” group, these women (together with their male colleagues) were a very loose coalition of like-minded individuals, non-violent in their strategy and totally independent in their political affiliations. In parallel with photographing their political actions, I also sat and listened to them, attempting to educate myself and understand their approach and objectives: eliminating the Israeli occupation, confronting the totalitarian nature of the Palestinian Authority, altering their own place as women in a patriarchal Middle Eastern society.

I was intrigued and quite soon realized that this was something unique in our region that I wanted to document.

What do the pictures convey in your eyes?

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is dominated by a very specific sort of visual images: armed soldiers shooting guns, young men throwing stones, tanks, warplanes, flags, suffering. These images are dictated by an accepted and assumed paradigm that dramatically influences our perception of the conflict, of each side party to the conflict, and of the nature of “acceptable” interaction and communication. You rarely see conflict-related images of women – Palestinian or...

The Prime Minister’s Office reported on Tuesday that Khader Adnan, now on the 66th day of his hunger strike, will call off his protest in a deal that will see him released on April 17. The report was confirmed on Tuesday evening by Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, which has been overseeing the case.

Announcing the deal, Ofir Gendelman from the PMO tweeted, “#khaderadnan announced that he is ending his hunger strike. If there’s no new evidence against him, he will be released from custody on 17.4.”

Israel’s High Court of Justice had been set on Tuesday afternoon to hear a petition against Adnan’s administrative detention, but the hearing was canceled and the petition withdrawn in the wake of the deal. The court clarified that the deal is incumbent upon the military court’s agreement not to extend Adnan’s detention past April 17, as long as new substantial evidence against him does not come to light. The court’s announcement can be read here, in Hebrew.

An Addameer press release explained that the terms of the agreement met the conditions outlined by Adnan to call off his strike: that his detention would not be extended, and would be counted from the date of his arrest and not from January 8, the date the detention order was issued. The press release also calls into question the danger to security that Israeli authorities claim Adnan poses:

Adnan, who is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, was arrested on December 17, after which he immediately launched his hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention. He is presently hospitalized at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, and has not been charged or notified of the suspicions against him.

Ahead of the hearing, which was originally set for Thursday but moved up last minute, hundreds demonstrated in front of the Ofer Prison in the West Bank. According to Omar Rahman, Israeli forces sprayed demonstrators with teargas and “skunk” water. Injuries and arrests were reported.

Rumors that Adnan would be released abounded on Twitter ahead of the planned hearing. Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organization, tweeted that they could not confirm these rumors, and activists called for caution.

On the rumors, the organization tweeted, “We know that Israelis are trying to negotiate a deal & we cannot confirm until we know the details of the deal and #KhaderAdnan‘s position,” later adding that,...

Cold winter nights present new humanitarian challenges to homeless asylum seekers. While concerned citizens try to help, there is little they can do against a government explicitly working to make the lives of Israel’s refugee population as miserable as possible. 

Citizens distributing food to refugees in Levinsky Park this week (photo: Oren Ziv / Activestills)

South Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park is home to a steady rotation of some 150 refugees and asylum seekers who spend their nights on its lawns. A typically temperate winter recently made way for an unusually cold stretch, and earlier this week, it was reported that a homeless asylum seeker froze to death in the park.

The news had a ripple effect, prompting concerned citizens and groups to gather coats, blankets and food – collected from both sympathetic businesses and purchased privately – to bring to the park. Even the Tel Aviv municipality seemed to have sprung into action, issuing a call for volunteers to help distribute blankets and hot food to homeless refugees.

Despite the reports, it is unclear whether the man in question was actually an asylum seeker, or if he died. But the response to the reports highlights the helplessness of sympathetic citizens in the face of state policy to turn the lives of asylum seekers in Israel into a living hell. As Israel’s asylum climate steadily deteriorates, the struggle for survival in Levinsky Park could presage a larger humanitarian nightmare.

The municipality now distributing food and blankets is the same municipality that recently ordered its contractors to fire the some 800 refugees and asylum seekers they employ, primarily in street cleaning. The move came despite a clear commitment the government made to the Supreme Court to refrain from enforcing a ban on hiring asylum seekers, thereby explicitly sanctioning their employment.

This is also the same municipality shutting down refugee-owed businesses and threatening to rescind the tax benefits enjoyed by African churches providing much-needed shelter to some homeless asylum seekers. And this is the same municipality that every morning throws out the blankets – donated by citizens desperate to do the little they can – that the refugees hide in and around the park when they embark on...

By Noa Yachot and Roi Maor

The High Court of Justice dismissed on Thursday a petition contesting the so-called “Nakba Law,” which enables the state to reduce public funding for institutions that commemorate the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Read the ruling here (in Hebrew only).

The law, passed in March of last year, originally sought to criminalize the commemoration of the Nakba Law. Its latest version, called Amendment 39 to the Budget Foundations Law, threatens to withdraw public funds from bodies considered to have acted to associate feelings of mourning with the establishment of Israel’s independence. From the petition to the Supreme Court:

A three-justice panel rejected the petition submitted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, who argued that the law constitutes a dangerous violation of free speech. The three sitting justices refused to rule on the merits of the law’s constitutionality. Instead, they argued that the legal question is not yet “ripe” for a decision, because no institutions have yet suffered the law’s effects.

In joining the decision of Justice Miriam Naor, outgoing Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch wrote:

The petitioners claim that the mere fact of the law constitutes a violation of free speech, a chilling effect on public discourse and a blow to the right of Palestinian citizens of the state to express their identity and...

In the spring of 2010, it emerged that a young journalist had been under house arrest for several months for leaking documents that led to the publication of an investigative report on IDF misconduct. Thanks to an unprecedented media blackout, the case made headlines around the world. Anat Kamm is serving a  four and a half-year prison sentence. Uri Blau, the journalist behind the report, will stand trial. This is how the case unfolded.

Anat Kamm at the Tel Aviv District Court, May 2010 (photo: Oren Ziv / Activestills.org)

December 14, 2006 The High Court of Justice rejects a petition against the IDF practice of targeted killings of wanted militants. However, the ruling – former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak’s last – restricts the practice, establishing circumstances that render such killings unlawful, including when arrest is possible or in cases where the killing would cause disproportionate harm to civilians. The decision can be found in full here.

June 20, 2007 The IDF kills Palestinians Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha and Ibrahim Ahmed Abd al-Latif Abed, in what it presents to the public as a gunfight that erupted during a routine military raid in the West Bank.

Summer 2008 Anat Kamm, a 21-year-old reporter for the Walla portal’s media news website, transfers documents she had burned to a disk while serving as a clerk in the IDF to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau. (Her account of her actions as presented to the court is found here, in Hebrew)

November 28, 2008 Haaretz reporter Uri Blau publishes an investigative report in Haaretz Magazine based on the documents he received from Kamm. The report reveals that the IDF had approved well in advance the targeted killing of Malaisha, contravening the High Court ruling and intentionally misleading the public. The report was attributed to “classified IDF documents” and had been approved by the Military Censor before going to press. The pages of the report depicted scanned images of the documents Blau had acquired from Kamm.

September 15, 2009 Haaretz and the Shin Bet security service reach an agreement requiring Blau to transfer certain classified documents in his possession in exchange for the agency’s pledge not to investigate his sources. Blau handed...

Some two weeks after the forced removal of the last of the tents that represented the summer protest movement, Israelis on Saturday joined demonstrators all over the world in a coordinated day of protests against the financial system. Events took place in various Israeli cities. In Tel Aviv, the main event was held in the square of the Museum of Art, where at least 1,000 people gathered.

The square was turned into somewhat of a political fair, with discussion circles, stalls promoting a dizzying number of political parties and movements, an ecological corner and finger painting for children. Organizers made a concerted effort to link the event to global protests, with a Twitter corner projecting related tweets from around the world, another screen broadcasting video footage from New York, and another that featured Israelis attending protests in New York and Croatia, skyping in to a panel discussion.

In a sign of the Tel Aviv municipality’s growing hostility toward the protest movement, the city refused to supply electricity for the event, and organizers were forced to bring in generators to provide power. Earlier in the day, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai intervened to cancel a police-approved party on Rothschild Boulevard, the focus of the summer tent protest. Activists have called on protesters to come to the boulevard at 10 P.M., where they intend to hold the party – newly billed “Occupy Rothschild” – as planned. Some photos from the museum event:

Rothschild’s last tent dwellers relocated to the museum for the day

“Standing on our heads; changing reality”

Requisite Gilad Schalit reference

On-site exhibit of photographer Dotan Goor Arye’s photos from the summer

On-site exhibit by photographer Dotan Goor Arye