Issa Amro

Issa Amro (Arabic: عيسى عمرو; April 13, 1980) is a prominent Palestinian human rights defender and activist based in Hebron, West Bank. He is the coordinator and co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Amro is a spokesman for and practitioner of Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories. He advocates the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience focused on the city of Hebron. In 2010, he was declared “human rights defender of the year in Palestine” by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and is recognized as a human rights defender by the European Union. In 2013, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern for his wellbeing and safety due to numerous accounts of harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers and a series of arbitrary arrests. At present, Amro is being indicted by the Israeli military court with 18 charges against him. The exact date of the trial is as of yet unknown.

Early years

On January 15, 2003, two years after the start of the Second Intifada, the Israeli army declared the Palestine Polytechnic University a closed military zone and sealed off its entrances. Amro, who was then in his last year of an engineering degree, decided to take action against the closures. With the participation of other students of the university, Amro organized actions of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience for half a year. These actions included protests and demonstrations, moving into classrooms, sit-ins, and having lessons in the presence of Israeli soldiers. The campaigning was a success and the university was reopened in June.

Amro describes this victory as his gateway into resistance against the occupation. He took inspiration from known human rights defenders, such as Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. He stated in a piece for The Guardian:

“I became convinced that their non-violent method was the best strategy for community resistance. Furthermore non-violence meant that there was a role for every Palestinian...My campaigning, my whole philosophy, everything I do now, is underpinned by these ideas.”

Amro became part of B’Tselem and won the One World Media award in 2009 for the “Shooting Back” camera project, which he coordinated in Hebron. The project distributed cameras to Palestinians for the purpose of documenting human rights violations by Israeli soldiers and settlers. In 2008, B’Tselem reported an occasion where Amro himself was prevented from documenting Israeli settler disturbances, whereafter he was beaten and arrested by Israeli military.

Youth Against Settlements

(See also: Youth Against Settlements)

Issa Amro is the coordinator Youth Against Settlements (YAS), which he describes as his major project to involve young Palestinians in nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation. He stated that his dream is to see nonviolence used as the methodology for a massive Palestinian resistance against the occupation. He co-founded YAS in 2007 as a group that documents and protests against human rights violations. The group’s leading campaign is Open Shuhada Street, which calls for an end to the closures and restrictions enforced on Hebron’s main street. The campaign takes place in several countries worldwide.

2015—present

During the surge of violence throughout the Palestinian territories in autumn 2015, Issa Amro took part in discouraging Palestinian youths from carrying out knife attacks and instead advocated a nonviolent approach to resistance. He stated that he felt more worried about being shot by the Israeli army during these times than ever before.

At the regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in September 2015, Amro said that he was “extremely concerned” with the situation in Palestine during this time and stated that “the erupting violence over the past weeks…can only end when international law is applied.” He mentioned the case of 18-year-old Hadil Hashlamoun, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces, and whose death was reported as “unlawful” by Amnesty International:

“Mr. President, I was present when they took her body away, and saw the settlers and soldiers rejoice at her fate. We urgently need an impartial international investigation into her case,” Amro stated.

Issa Amro wrote an article for the Huffington Post in response to the Hebron shooting incident in March, 2016. A video was published by B’Tselem showing Israeli soldier Elor Azaria shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the head at point-blank range, while the Palestinian was lying wounded on the ground. In his article, Amro described being guarded by Azaria for seven hours during an arrest in March before the shooting incident. Amro did not consider the soldier to be “unusually fanatical or extreme.” Instead, he blamed the normalization of anti-Palestinian hatred within the Israeli military, and Benjamin Netanyahu for “pulling verbal triggers of incitement” and denying freedom for Palestinians with his politics.

In an article written for The Nation, Amro stated, “I have been arrested more times than I can count for nonviolent human-rights work.”

In a statement from 2013, the UN Council of Human Rights addressed the issue of ongoing harassment of Amro. Juan E. Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, expressed deep concern for Amro’s “life, physical integrity and the psychological toll that [this harassment] is having on his health and family.”

Amro was arrested and detained 20 times in 2012 without any charges filed against him, and six more times in 2013 up to the point that the statement was written. It mentions an incident from July 8, 2013, when “Israeli soldiers allegedly beat Mr. Amro, taking photos of him on a stretcher and threatening to shoot him. He was hospitalized more than five hours later and summoned to the same police station the next day.” The report also mentioned a recent “number of death threats from settler organizations” against Amro.

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, described the acts against Amro as an “unacceptable campaign of harassment, intimidation and reprisals.” The report also mentioned a raid of the Youth Against Settlements media center in July, 2013, where Israeli soldiers allegedly fired on Amro and three other activists. Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, called for the protection of Youth Against Settlements members and for “those responsible for the unacceptable acts against Mr. Amro [to be] held accountable.”

In addition to the incidents mentioned in the statement, a notable case is that of Israeli right-wing politician Baruch Marzel who was charged for an attack on Issa Amro on February 8, 2013. He entered Amro’s home and assaulted him for “unknown reasons.” Reportedly, Amro was arrested on that day as a result of the occurrence, and later released. Amro stated in a regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in 2013 that according to his Israeli lawyer, all his arrests were arbitrary.

In 2014, Haaretz reported that an Israeli soldier stated that he only protects Jews, and proceeded to insult Amro and threaten to shoot him.

Trial

On February 26, 2016, Issa Amro took part in a nonviolent demonstration calling for an end to the restrictions imposed on Hebron’s Shuhada Street. A few days later on February 29, while speaking to a tour group from Breaking the Silence, Amro was arrested and brought to Gush Etzion detention center. Here, he was accused of incitement and of organizing illegal protests. He was released the following day with the warning to expect an invitation to court. A police officer allegedly told him that he had no legal basis for the arrest but had received orders from above to carry it out. In response to the event, Amnesty International released a statement about Amro’s arrest, which called for the Israeli government to “cease intimidation of human rights defenders.”

On July 15, 2016, Youth Against Settlements began to establish a cinema in Hebron in cooperation with Center for Jewish Nonviolence. The action was suppressed by Israeli military and police. Soon afterward, Issa Amro was indicted by the Israeli military court. Amro now faces 18 separate charges dating between 2010 and 2016. The charges include the accusations from March along with “insulting a soldier,” “spitting in the direction of a settler,” “entering a closed military zone,” and other apparent offenses. There are 38 witnesses against him. Amro’s Israeli lawyer, Gabi Lasky, stated that:

"...the fact that in this case he was released dozens of times over the years without any indictment, and suddenly an indictment is served that collects all the conduct for which he was released, absolutely seems to be a matter of political persecution."

"I don’t think somebody can claim that my political activity is criminal. The court always lets me go when they arrest me for no reason, I spread a lot of video footage that embarrasses the authorities. They don’t want moderate Palestinians here who talk to diplomats about a two-state solution,” Amro stated to Haaretz.

Former UN Special Reporter on Palestine, Prof. Dr. Richard Falk, signed an urgent appeal dated September 21, 2016, coordinated by Scales for Justice. The appeal was sent to Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and called for the charges against Amro to be dropped and for an end to the harassment against him. While holding office in 2013, prior to the appeal, Falk had stated that Amro appeared to be the victim of a “pattern of harassment.” Other petitions for Amro’s case are led by organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Code Pink: Women for Peace, who emphasized that the Israeli military court’s conviction rate of Palestinians is over 99%. Amro would have faced trial on the 25th of September, 2016, but it was postponed and the court date is currently unknown.