Omar Shakir, who has worked for the rights group for more than 10 years, says he has lost faith in the organization.
The Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has resigned in protest, saying the organization’s new head blocked a report accusing Israel of “crimes against humanity” because of its denial of Palestinians. Refugees’ right of return.
Omar Shakir, who has worked for the rights group for more than 10 years, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the report sought to link the “wiping out of camps in Gaza and the evacuation of camps in the West Bank, with an all-out offensive led by the Israeli government against UNRWA, the (United Nations) aid agency for Palestine refugees in Palestine.” Nakba 2.0 that we see unfolding beyond us, it is important that we learn from Naqaba 1.0”.
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The Nakba, which means “catastrophe”, saw 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes and land by Zionist armed groups and later formed the new state of Israel in 1948. Thousands of Palestinians were killed during the Naqaba.
Shakir said the report documented how the denial of repatriation “amounts to a crime against humanity”.
He said he was told that Philip Bolopian, the executive director who took over at the helm of HRW late last year, feared the report would be misinterpreted as “demographically extinguishing the Jewishness of the State of Israel,” according to his resignation letter seen by Al Jazeera and dated Jan. 15.
Shakir wrote: “Through this process, I have lost faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on facts and law enforcement.”
The report was due to be published on December 4 and was given the green light by others at HRW during an internal review, Shakir said.
In a statement to Al Jazeera, HRW said it had received the resignations of two people working on Israel-Palestine “after deciding to pause publication of a draft report on the right of return of Palestinian refugees”.
“The report in question raises complex and consequential issues. In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards,” the group said.
“For that reason, publication of the report has been halted pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing.”
‘Acts of Genocide’ in Gaza
In his letter, Shakir said he has been criticized by people in Israel and Palestine throughout his time at HRW.
“My strongest defense is stating with absolute confidence that we maintain our Israel/Palestine work to the same standards as the other 100 countries we cover,” he wrote.
But there were challenges during his tenure, he added.
“At times, some within the organization, driven by bias, pressure, politics or cowardice, have tried to sway our findings on Israel/Palestine to their preferred conclusions, but, throughout my tenure, the review process has resulted in our publishing the facts as documented and our principled and consistent application of the law.
At HRW, Shakir investigated rights abuses in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and documented how Israel established a system of apartheid and persecuted Palestinians.
In 2019, the Israeli Govt He was expelled Because of his advocacy.
in A report As of late 2024, HRW has stated that Israel “deliberately calculated the living conditions of its Palestinian citizens by depriving its Palestinian citizens of sufficient water to destroy part of the population, likely resulting in thousands of deaths”.
The group said at the time that it held Israeli authorities “responsible for crimes against humanity and acts of genocide”.