How Human Rights Watch Killed a Report Calling Israel’s Denial of Palestinians’ Right of Return a Crime Against Humanity

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The Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Omar Shakir, resigned effective on Monday after over almost a decade at the organization in protest of a top-level decision to shelve a report that characterized Israel’s decades-long campaign to deny Palestinians the right of return to their homes and land a “crime against humanity.”

The 43-page report formally underwent every step in Human Rights Watch’s internal review process, including evaluations by the divisions covering refugees, international justice, women and children’s rights, and the legal team over seven months. After that process was completed, incoming Executive Director Philippe Bolopion halted the report roughly two weeks before its scheduled publication on December 4. Shakir was informed of the decision by a phone call.

The report, which cites interviews with 53 Palestinian refugees and included fieldwork in refugee camps across Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, connected the expulsions of 1948 all the way to the present moment with the emptying of the camps in Gaza and the West Bank over the past two years. Shakir hoped that the report would open “a path to justice for Palestinian refugees.”

Bolopion’s decision came after a senior official at HRW raised concerns about the publication of the report. Shakir said in his resignation email that one senior leader told him it would be perceived as a call to “demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.”

“I’ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I’ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances,” Shakir told Drop Site. “I have lost faith in our senior leadership’s fidelity to the core way that we do our work, to the integrity of our work, at least in the context of Israel, Palestine.” Milena Ansari, a Palestinian assistant researcher and the only other member of HRW’s Israel and Palestine team also resigned.

“The refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told,” Shakir said.

In response to an inquiry from Drop Site, HRW said in a written statement: “The report in question raised complex and consequential issues.