For the last 20 years, Adalah has been at the forefront of the legal and political struggle of Palestinian citizens of Israel for equal rights and historic justice. “20 years of Adalah” is a visual representation of the major human rights cases, landmark court decisions, publications, and international advocacy campaigns that have defined our work for over two decades. You will also find key moments in our legal defense of the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. ;xNLx;;xNLx;We believe that justice can only be secured when the fundamental rights of individuals and communities are protected. Our dedicated team of lawyers and human rights advocates is convinced that prioritizing human rights will make possible a transformative movement for social and political change. Join us as we continue to work with principle and creativity to reach new milestones toward equality and justice for Palestinians.
Adalah ("Justice" in Arabic) is an independent human rights organization and legal center working to promote and defend the rights of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel as well as Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Established in 1996 as a joint project of The Galilee Society and the Arab Association for Human Rights. Adalah is initially hosted in the Galilee Society’s building in Shafa’amr. Became an independent NGO and certified by the Registrar of Associations in December 1997.
Adalah’s legal efforts to end the discriminatory allocations of the Ministry of Religious Affairs began in earnest in 1997, when Adalah filed a petition to the Supreme Court of Israel. Adalah’s petition emphasized that the Muslim, Christian and Druze communities received only 2% of the total religious budget in 1997 and only 1.86% in 1998, despite the fact that they account for 20% of Israel’s population. Adalah’s petition asked the Supreme Court to declare four provisions of the Knesset Budget Law (1998) unconstitutional based on the principle of equality.
State-funded “mother and child” clinics provide preventive health services and post-natal care. They operate throughout Israel, but not in most Arab Bedouin villages in Naqab (Negev), because of their unrecognized status. However, the clinics are of particular importance to the Bedouin, who have the highest infant mortality rates in Israel. After the Health Ministry opened clinics in six unrecognized villages in 2000-2001 following Adalah’s litigation, it suddenly closed three in 2009. In one of its first cases, Adalah went to the Supreme Court in 1997 to demand the establishment of 12 clinics in the Naqab.
The Supreme Court issues an order nisi in Adalah's case against the mixed municipalities of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth Illit, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Ramle-Lod. Adalah's petition demands that these municipalities add Arabic to all the public road signs within their jurisdictions. The petition, submitted with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), argues that posting signs in only Hebrew discriminates against the Palestinian Arab minority in these municipalities.
“National Priority Areas” (NPAs) are towns, villages or areas whose residents have been chosen by the government to receive a range of lucrative state benefits and financial incentives. Almost all of them are Jewish towns and villages. The state has used the NPA classification both to bolster the Jewish populations of these areas and to direct state resources to their Jewish residents at the expense of Arab citizens. In a landmark judgment in 2006, the Supreme Court unanimously decided to cancel the government’s decision establishing NPAs in the field of education, accepting Adalah’s petition against it.
First report submitted to UN human rights treaty body, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), "Legal Violations of Arab Minority Rights in Israel." Report identifies and discusses 20 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and critiques Israel's report to the CERD. The Committee incorporated many of Adalah's concerns into its Concluding Observations. Since this time and through the present, Adalah has submitted NGO reports and participated in almost all of the UN human rights treaty body sessions in their reviews of Israel.
Adalah successfully petitions against Interior Ministry to allow residents of unrecognized village of Husseniya to list the village as their official address on their identity cards. The prohibition violates citizens' right to participate in elections without difficulty, the right to receive mail in one's village or home, and the right to maintain a community ('the right to be we'). The Court accepts the case and orders the Interior Ministry to pay Adalah NIS 5,000 in legal expenses. This is the first time Arab citizens have been permitted by the state to list an unrecognized village as their official address.
The Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Uprooted Palestinians applies for permit to demonstrate inside Moshav Ben 'Ami, which sits on land of Umm al-Faraj, an Arab village uprooted in 1948, to protest its destruction of a mosque and cemetery. Adalah petitions to compel police to grant a permit to uprooted residents to demonstrate. Final settlement reached in January 1999, when police agree to allow maximum 300 demonstrators, provided they enter the moshav on buses and speeches are not electronically amplified.
Adalah publishes Adalah’s Review. Volume 1 – Politics, Identity and Law (Fall 1999) - The first volume of Adalah’s Review aims to open a multi-disciplinary, multi-layered discussion about politics, law and identity, with most authors addressing the politics of Arab Palestinian identity in the Israeli legal area. Topics in subsequent volumes include: * Land, Law and Violence, In the Name of Security, and On Criminalization.
Al-Jelasi is a neighborhood in the center of the Palestinian Arab village of Kammaneh in northern Israel. Both Al-Jelasi and Kammaneh have existed since the 1930s, yet until 1995, neither were recognized by the state. In 1993, the government forced a steering committee to prepare Kammaneh for impending recognition but the committee decided to exclude Al-Jelasi and its 160 inhabitants from Kammaneh. The move was meant to pressure Al-Jelasi residents to move to other neighborhoods, leaving its lands open for expansion of the nearby Jewish village of Kamoun. In 1999, Adalah files a Supreme Court petition on behalf of Al-Jelasi residents arguing that the decision to recognize Kammaneh must relate to all neighborhoods, and that the continued denial of Al-Jelasi's recognition violates rights of its residents.
