Israeli forces raid offices of Palestinian civil society groups in West Bank
Middle East EyeAug 19, 2022
During overnight raids on Thurs., in Ramallah, West Bank, Israeli forces closed the offices of seven Palestinian human rights organizations - six of which it had previously deemed terrorist organizations - confiscating items before welding doors shut.
The move has sparked international criticism, with the UN and the US urging Israel to disclose details of charges supporting the closures and to provide evidence of allegedly unlawful activities.
These attacks against Palestinian civil society come amid a broader campaign to vilify Palestinian institutions, especially human rights groups that have criticized and denounced Israel's crimes and abuses. Hopefully, this latest crackdown will backfire as the international community has rightly stood with the NGOs after Israel failed to prove its claims.
It requires a lot of naivety to believe that these NGOs represent "civil society" and aren't part of a soft-power strategy against Israel. These groups have verifiable connections with the Marxist-Leninist PFLP and yet are allowed to operate in and against Israel. Letting this go unpunished will only worsen the situation.
There's a 5% chance that Israel and Palestine will hold peace talks in 2022, according to the Metaculus prediction community.