In yet another attack on Palestinian civil society, while committing genocide against the Palestinian People, Israel’s occupation army raided the offices of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) on Monday morning. This follows similar assaults on prominent human rights and development organizations as part of Israel’s patterned assault on Palestinian civil society.
On 1 December, heavily armed Israel troops, accompanied by a military-propagandist team, simultaneously stormed and looted the offices of AUWC’s headquarters in Ramallah/al-Bireh and Hebron, in Area A of the West Bank. Since the Oslo Agreements, these areas are supposed to be under full Palestinian Authority control, but are violated daily by the occupation forces.
In this instance, Israeli troops searched the offices, vandalized and stole contents, including cash and equipment estimated to be worth US$215,000. The Ram Battalion blindfolded, arrested and abducted eight staff and detained another 14 before shutting down the offices and posting military-closure orders on their doors. They destroyed the UAWC local seed bank in Hebron, which over twenty years to complete.
UAWC is a longstanding Palestinian nongovernmental developmental institution that has served farmers and rural communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for decades. The Union has contributed greatly to the Palestinian People’s survival through agricultural-development and food-security programs. This latest attack constitutes a gross violation of international law and the protected status of such legal, developmental and humanitarian institutions under occupation.
The targeting of this local agricultural organization and its seed bank is a direct attack on Palestinian agricultural and the Palestinian People’s rights to their land, food and livelihoods. It seeks to incapacitate institutions that support Palestinians’ survival on their land, protect it from confiscation and colonization. UAWC’s work supports farmers to withstand colonization and Israeli military and settler attempts to bring about their dispossession and destitution.
This new assault is not an isolated incident. It comes within the context of the occupation`s ongoing policy of persistently targeting Palestinian institutions and their workers, aiming to destroy the Palestinian people`s economy, civil society, and capacity to recover. During the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip, dozens of developmental and humanitarian civil society headquarters have been completely or partially destroyed, and Israel’s army has murdered over 500 humanitarian workers while performing their civic duty. This cumulative Israeli state behavior constitutes grave breaches of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, as well as international criminal prohibitions.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has responded by stressing that these US sanctions “only deepen impunity, silence victims’ voices and encourage a climate of continued commission of violations and international crimes.” Some of the many cases of Israel’s repression of development workers and civil actors and activities are found also on the UN’s Access Support Unit, which cites at least 7,000 incidents since it began monitoring in 2008.
HIC-HLRN condemns this criminal assault on licensed Palestinian civil society institutions and calls for the unconditional release of all Palestinian political prisoners and housing and land rights defenders, and demands full reparation for the harm the apartheid regime has inflicted on them.
HIC-HLRN reminds concerned parties that:
- All states and their diplomatic and missions urgently must exercise their erga omnes duties under international law to intervene to bring an end to Israel’s illegal situation, including its targeting of Palestinian civil institutions and the entire occupation apparatus.
- The United Nations and its specialized agencies must be more assertive to fulfill their Charter-based duties to take practical and immediate measures beyond monitoring and documentation of Israel’s occupation crimes, rather to protect Palestinian developmental institutions and their workers.
- The ICC must accelerate its investigations and prosecution of Israeli occupation authorities and personnel to hold them accountable for their crimes against Palestinians, their public and private property, institutions and their workers, and make reparations to all affected legal and natural persons incurring costs, loss and damage from these abuses.
- Donor countries and international institutions should enhance their support and protection to Palestinian civil society institutions, which form the first line of defense of the Palestinian People’s rights and play a vital role in providing humanitarian and developmental services.
- Civil society and activists worldwide have the power and opportunity now to escalate their pressure on all spheres of government to fulfill their obligations to sanction, divest and refrain from cooperating with Israeli perpetrators and to recognize the outcomes of their crimes. To the extent of their abilities, all civil society and social movements should also provide international protection for the Palestinian people and take steps to end Israel’s practices of genocide, apartheid, settler-colonialism and occupation.
Protecting Palestinian People, its land and institutions is our international duty requiring immediate and meaningful remedial action.
Photo: Signs IDF troops posted at AUWC headquarters in Ramallah after it raid on the NGO 1 December 2025. Source: Jerusalem Post.
