IDF blacklists 6 Palestinian rights groups, allowing Israel to act against them

The Israel Defense Forces officially designates six Palestinian rights groups as “unauthorized organizations,” the military legal equivalent of terrorist organizations, following a similar ruling by Defense Minister Benny Gantz last month, despite international criticism against this decision.

Israel maintains that the six Palestinian organizations – Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Labor Committees – serve of facades to the Popular Front for the terrorist group Liberation of Palestine, which the groups have repeatedly denied and which has been questioned by their European and international donors.

Last month, Gantz declared them terrorist organizations, a designation with relatively little immediate impact, as the groups operate in the West Bank and therefore officially outside Israel’s jurisdiction.

Today, however, the head of the IDF Central Command, which has formal legal authority over the West Bank, also banned the groups “after receiving abundant, varied and reliable information that these organizations represented a wing of the Le. terrorist group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, ”the army said.

With this official designation, the military now has the power, among other things, to shut down the organization’s offices and arrest its members.