Israeli forces raided the offices of two Palestinian non-government organisations and stormed the courtyard of the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, on Tuesday, Al Jazeera reported. Snipers were deployed around the entrances to the medical complex during the operation, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
The offices searched were those of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. The New Arab reported that troops seized equipment and files in the raid on Addameer.
The organisations have been through this before. “Israeli forces have been raiding one of the compounds that belongs to Addameer. The NGO has been closed before by the Israeli forces. It has been deemed by the Israeli army and establishment as a terrorist organisation,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent Ibrahim reported from Ramallah.
Both groups were among six Palestinian civil society organisations that Israel designated as “terrorist” organisations in October 2021, a decision that has remained contested ever since. The groups rejected the charges, and nine EU member states said in 2022 they would keep working with the six, citing a lack of evidence to justify the designations. UN human rights experts have urged governments to resume funding the organisations, and human rights lawyer Michael Sfard told a UN committee in late 2021 that Israel had provided no evidence for its allegations against them.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including Ramallah, since 1967. The city serves as the administrative seat of the Palestinian Authority, but Israeli forces enter it, and have shut down offices there, repeatedly; Addameer’s own closure predates Tuesday’s search.
Al Jazeera’s account reported no casualties and carried no comment from the Israeli military on the raids. What the day’s operations did confirm is that the 2021 designations remain active instruments: five years on, still disputed abroad, and still enforced with soldiers in a hospital courtyard and snipers at its doors.