The Haifa-based human rights group Adalah ("Justice" in Arabic) defends the rights of Palestinians living in Israel and those living in the occupied Palestinian territory. Adalah senior attorney Orna Kohn told us that her group fights discriminatory laws in both places. In some cases international remedies have been exhausted and the international community must intervene. She says the United States helps Israel ignore international law because it vetoes any anti-Israeli action.
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| Orna Kohn |
Orna saya Adalah won a long court battle to require Israel to provide mother-child clinics for the Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel in the unrecognized villages in the Negev. Now the organization is giving high priority to fighting a pending bill that would lead to the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Bedouins. It is also continuing to fight discriminatory citizenship laws that leave thousands of people "in the impossible situation of temporary status that must be renewed all the time." Adalah is also working with land and planning rights; economic, social, and cultural rights; and prisoner rights.
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| Ahmed Odeh and family |
Discrimination in education is a concern for Ahmed Odeh and his family, who are graciously hosting some of our delegation tonight in the mixed city of Akka (Akko in Hebrew), near Haifa. He says schools for Arab students are overcrowded and lacking in facilities, in sharp contrast to the schools for Jewish students. He also complains that Arabs are underrepresented for municipal jobs, and hold mainly menial ones. He organized a demonstration that persuaded city authorities to allow traditional celebration of a Muslim festival earlier this year.
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| Nabil Alree |
The Freedom Theater in Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank, which we visited this morning, is engaged in cultural resistance to discrimination and the occupation. Artistic director Nabil Alree told us he was jailed by Israeli authorities for 40 days on unfounded charges of killing his friend, the theater's founder Juliano Markamus. Four others from the theater have been arrested. "The Palestinian Authority doesn't like us either," Nabil says. "We are independent, fighting for freedom."
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| Sunset at Akka harbor |
The Haifa-based human rights group Adalah ("Justice" in Arabic) defends the rights of Palestinians living in Israel and those living in the occupied Palestinian territory. Adalah senior attorney Orna Kohn told us that her group fights discriminatory laws in both places. In some cases international remedies have been exhausted and the international community must intervene. She says the United States helps Israel ignore international law because it vetoes any anti-Israeli action.
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