TEL AVIV: Israel on Friday designated six Palestinian civil society groups as terrorist organizations and accused them of funnelling donor aid to militants.
The charge was rejected by human rights watchdogs who said the move will stifle monitoring of potential abuses.
The designations authorize Israeli authorities to close the groups’ offices, seize their assets and arrest their staff in the occupied West Bank, watchdogs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint statement condemning the move.
Israel’s defense ministry said the six Palestinian groups had ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), a left-wing faction with an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis.
“(The) declared organizations received large sums of money from European countries and international organizations, using a variety of forgery and deceit,” the defense ministry said in a statement, alleging the money had supported PFLP’s activities.
The groups include leading Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq and Addameer, who document alleged rights violations by both Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in the West Bank.
Asked for comment, an official with PFLP, which is on the European Union’s terrorism blacklist, did not outright reject ties to the six groups but said they maintain relations with civil society organizations across the West Bank and Gaza.
“It is part of the rough battle Israel is launching against the Palestinian people and against civil society groups, in order to exhaust them,” PFLP official Kayed Al-Ghoul said.
Al-Haq did not immediately provide comment. Addameer and another one of the designated groups, Defense for Children International — Palestine, rejected the Israeli accusations as an “attempt to eliminate Palestinian civil society.”
The other three groups listed did not immediately provide comment.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said the “decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations.”
They added: “The decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.”
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek the territories for a future state.
Israel designates six Palestinian civil society groups as terrorists
https://arab.news/yb98t
Israel designates six Palestinian civil society groups as terrorists
- The designations authorise Israeli authorities to close the groups' offices, seize their assets and arrest their staff in the occupied West Bank
- Israel's defence ministry said the six Palestinian groups had ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Death toll rises to at least 10 in violence around Iran protests
- The weeklong protests, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations
DUBAI: Violence surrounding protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy killed two other people, authorities said Saturday, raising the death toll in the demonstrations to at least 10 as they showed no signs of stopping.
The new deaths follow US President Donald Trump warning Iran on Friday that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.” While it remains unclear how and if Trump will intervene, his comments sparked an immediate, angry response from officials within the theocracy threatening to target American troops in the Mideast.
The weeklong protests, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
The deaths overnight into Saturday involved a new level of violence. In Qom, home to the country’s major Shiite seminaries, a grenade exploded, killing a man there, the state-owned IRAN newspaper reported. It quoted security officials alleging the man carried the grenade to attack people in the city, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.
Online videos from Qom purportedly showed fires in the street overnight.
The second death happened in the town of Harsin, some 370 kilometers (230 miles) southwest of Tehran. There, the newspaper said a member of the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, died in a gun and knife attack in the town in Kermanshah province.
Demonstrations have reached over 100 locations in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
