This month, HaMoked marks thirty years since its founding.
In these thirty years, HaMoked has assisted hundreds of thousands of people: families searching for their loved ones, men being tortured in interrogation, people denied one of the myriad permits Israel requires to move freely within the occupied territories or to live there with their family, homes threatened with punitive demolition – to name only some of the reasons Palestinians turn to us for assistance.
HaMoked's individual assistance has enabled tens of thousands of people to enjoy their rights. It has also resulted in changes to government and military policy that increase respect for human rights:
- From day one we have been helping families locate loved ones in detention. HaMoked's litigation forced the military to establish a detainee tracing center, and to date HaMoked has informed 85,581 anxious families of detainees' whereabouts.
- Through this daily tracing of detainees, HaMoked exposed the incommunicado detention and brutal interrogations of foreign nationals and also Palestinians in Secret Prison 1391 – and brought about an end to its use.
- HaMoked filed over 100 High Court petitions in real time to stop the torture of Palestinians in ISA ("shin bet") interrogations in the 1990s. This extensive litigation played a central role in the 1999 High Court ruling that ended the free hand of the ISA in employing systematic torture in interrogations of Palestinians.
- Since the 1995 closure of the Gaza Strip, we have assisted 252 couples separated by the closure to reunite and in over 2,000 cases enabled entry or exit from Gaza for humanitarian purposes.
- HaMoked's legal advocacy against the route of the Separation Wall that isolates large sections of the West Bank succeeded in dismantling the Wall around the villages of Azzun and Nabi Elyas. To date, we have assisted 800 farmers to access lands beyond the Wall.
- We filed 185 High Court petitions on behalf of Palestinians seeking legal status or stay permits in the West Bank for foreign spouses. Following this advocacy, in 2007, the state granted 32,000 family unification applications.
- We have assisted over 3,815 Palestinians prevented from traveling abroad. Over 80% of our advocacy in these cases is successful.
- HaMoked has lead the fight against the "Quiet Deportation" of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. As a result of our litigation along with partners, the Ministry of Interior no longer revokes residency status of Palestinians who move to the West Bank or abroad, so long as they maintain ties to the city, and those who lost residency can now apply to have it reinstated.
We are very proud of these accomplishments. But with each passing year, the occupation grows more entrenched and with it the denial of basic rights to over four million people. And the attacks and attempts to silence organizations like HaMoked grow as well.
In the face of these challenges, HaMoked will continue defending individual rights and challenging discriminatory and unjust policies. We thank all of you who have supported HaMoked's work.
