A/HRC/34/70 are openly critical of government entities, policies or actions in the name of promoting and protecting human rights (art. 12). B. Shrinking space for human rights defenders 38. In compiling the evidence for the present report, the Special Rapporteur has been in direct communication with human rights organizations in Palestine and Israel. Their common observation was that the protections and respect accorded to them, which were already precarious by the end of 2008, had declined precipitously after operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. This hostile atmosphere for human rights defenders has since become even more overtly toxic and harsh since 2015, in the aftermath of operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014 and the subsequent initiation by the International Criminal Court of a preliminary investigation, with the cooperation of a number of Palestinian human rights defenders, into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the most recent Gaza conflict and by the Israeli settlement project. In the words of one leading human rights group: “We are seeing a general assault by the government and right-wing groups on those parts of Israeli society that are still standing up for democratic values. The aim is to silence us.”49 Threats and assaults 39. Palestinian human rights organizations report that they have endured a repressive working environment in recent years, with their day-to-day operations stymied by concerted efforts from the Government of Israel, the Israeli military, private Israeli organizations and unknown individuals or groups to discredit and sabotage their work.50 The escalation in threats and physical assaults, cyberattacks, arrests and incarceration under military and administrative orders and bans and restrictions on movement is exacerbated by the absence of any effective means for remedies or protection. A report by the Human Rights Defenders Fund in 2015 found that the Israeli military and the occupation authorities had employed a promiscuous range of criminal, security and legal tools to harass and constrain the entirely legitimate and peaceful activities of human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. As the author observed: “In addition to draconian legislative attempts and ongoing efforts to depict them as public enemies, many human rights defenders, particularly activists, are the target of systematic criminalization efforts. Protesters are arrested and detained even when they do not break the law, they are subjected to strict conditions of release and are often indicted simply for their efforts to promote human rights.”51 40. Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization, has endured a grievous pattern of threats and cyberattacks and a campaign of attempted interference with its work by persons unknown. Beginning in the autumn of 2015 and continuing into 2016, a series of detailed letters from either anonymous individuals or individuals impersonating someone else were sent to donors and partners of Al-Haq, purporting to raise serious concerns about fraud, corruption, financial disarray, lack of transparency and organizational disunity at the organization. Al-Haq was obliged to expend considerable resources refuting the unfounded allegations, including having its auditors, Ernst and Young, assure the partners and donors that there had been no financial or 49 50 51 10 Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for B’Tselem, quoted in David Shulman, “Israel: the broken silence”, The New York Review of Books, 7 April 2016. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate, as defined in resolution 1993/2, is focused on violations of the law committed by Israel as the occupying Power and thus the present analysis is limited to that discussion. There are undoubtedly other groups, such as the Government of the State of Palestine, who similarly have an obligation to respect and protect human rights, including those of human rights defenders. See www.alhaq.org/publications/papers/PHROC.Submission.to.UN.SR.on.the.OPT.Re.HRDs.Nov2016.p df; Human Rights Defenders Fund, “Disturbing the peace: the use of criminal law to limit the actions of human rights defenders in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories” (2015), p. 63.