Callout from the Stop the Demolitions campaign
September 1st, 5.30pm North West London
PLACE AND TIME TO BE ANNOUNCED
-CHECK HERE FOR UPDATES
On September 1st, UK Lawyers for Israel is hosting a talk for Regavim, a pro-settler NGO with charitable status, pivotal in speeding up demolitions of Palestinian homes across the West Bank and Israel.
The talk, in a yet-to-be-disclosed location in North West London, will feature the NGO’s legal campaigns in the West Bank and its lobby efforts of the EU.
Regavim claim to work within a legal framework, simply ensuring that Israeli authorities uphold their own laws to demolish homes built without permits. But in reality, they are a group of settlers who use loopholes to ensure that only Palestinian structures are demolished and dismantled, leaving communities without proper roads, houses, and even water systems.
The group has charitable status but what kind of charity is dedicated to the destruction of communities?
Villages targeted by Regavim live with the constant fear of their homes and livelihoods being destroyed. This is not a charity ensuring the law is upheld, this is a racist group dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.
Show Regavim and their supporters that they’re not welcome in Britain. Join the demonstration against Regavim Sunday September 1st and check for updates here for location and time
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Founded as a legally-oriented NGO to counter grassroot organisations fighting for the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank, Regavim has received a surge of state funding in recent years, reaching 2,1 million shekels in 2016. Demolitions have more than doubled this year no doubt due to Regavim’s actions, doing the work of the Israeli Civil Administration and speeding demolition orders through.
Regavim spies on Palestinian communities using drones to identify homes built without a permit. They operate mostly in Area C of the West Bank which is under Israeli control meaning Palestinians must apply for building permits to the Israeli Civil Administration in order to build. However Palestinians are rarely if ever granted permits forcing them to build without. Regavim reports these homes and structures to the Israeli Civil Administration who hands out demolition orders. When communities challenge the orders, Regavim lawyers petition the court. They have gone so far as to sue the Israeli Civil Administration and government in their mission to ensure demolition orders are pushed through. In 2016, Regavim was also found to have funded the surveillance of a left-wing human rights activist in the region.
They have never filed a petition against a Jewish settlement built without a permit. This is discrimination and at the very least should strip the ‘NGO’ of its charitable status.
**recent lobbying EU to cease funding for the Union of Agricultural Work Committees which supports Palestinian farmers left vulnerable under occupation.
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