A/HRC/34/70 institutional malfeasance. Other messages contained explicit threats to the lives or wellbeing of various Al-Haq employees, including its General Director, Shawan Jabarin. 41. The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza, received a series of anonymous e-mail messages, Facebook posts and calls in 2015 and 2016, sent to staff, donors and partners in which institutional corruption and mismanagement were alleged and explicit threats to the lives and safety of its employees were made. Like Al-Haq, Al-Mezan has been active since 2015 in advocating accountability before the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes. 42. Youth against Settlements, a Hebron-based human rights organization, has had its centre raided several times by Israeli soldiers and it has been effectively closed on occasions after the Israeli military declared the neighbourhood surrounding it to be a closed military zone.52 In November 2016, the Israeli military conducted a night raid on the Health Development Information and Policy Institute, a Palestinian health advocacy organization based in Ramallah. They seized computers, servers and security camera footage, and left the offices in a shambles. In accordance with the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to have complete political and security control in Ramallah and other parts of Area A of the West Bank, but the Israeli military routinely tramples over this nominal Palestinian sovereignty.53 43. A number of individual Palestinian human rights defenders have encountered death threats, arrest and imprisonment, property damage and substantive interference with their right to peacefully protest. A short list of some of them, who all engage in non-violent activity, includes: • Abdallah Abu Rahma, who was active in protests against the separation wall through the village of Bil’in, was arrested several times in 2016 and 2017 for his participation in non-violent events protesting against the occupation. In May 2016, he was arrested by Israeli soldiers for his involvement in the Alwada cycling marathon and held for 10 days. Most recently, he was arrested at an Israeli military court hearing, which he was attending to support six Palestinians who had been arrested for participating in a peaceful protest against the proposed annexation of occupied Palestinian lands in late January 2017. Additionally, Israeli soldiers have conducted night raids on his home and confiscated his laptop. 54 • Imad Abu Shamsiyeh filmed the extrajudicial execution of a gravely wounded Palestinian by an Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria, in March 2016 in Hebron. The film was subsequently released publicly by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and the soldier was later convicted of manslaughter by an Israeli military court. Mr. Abu Shamsiyeh has since received multiple death threats from Israeli settlers living in the vicinity, anonymous death threats delivered by e-mail or posted on Facebook, travel restrictions, the stoning of his home by settlers, harassment of his family and a raid on his home by Israeli soldiers, with no accountability for these attacks and threats.55 • Farid al-Atrash, a Palestinian lawyer with the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Bethlehem, was arrested by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in Hebron in February 2016. He was charged with participating in an illegal demonstration and attacking soldiers, and remained in prison for four days before being released on bail. Video evidence appears to support his version that he 52 53 54 55 Submissions from human rights organizations to the Special Rapporteur. Marsad, “Israeli forces invade Ramallah offices of healthwork NGO”, 16 November 2016, available from www.marsad.ps/en/2016/11/16/israeli-forces-invade-ramallah-offices-healthwork-ngo/. Communication to a group of Special Rapporteurs from Scales of Justice and others, 27 January 2017; Human Rights Defenders Fund, communiqué, 5 December 2016. See https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/ongoing-threats-and-harassment-against-imad-abushamsiyya and Amnesty International, “Israeli government must cease intimidation of human rights defenders, protect them from attacks”, 12 April 2016. 11