Following the unlawful designation of six Palestinian civil society groups as ‘terrorist organisations’ by the Israeli Ministry of Defence in October 2021, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) raided the offices of human rights groups in the early hours of 18 August 2022. As part of this military operation, the office rooms of Al-Haq and Forensic Architecture’s Investigation Unit (FAI Unit) were forcibly broken into and documents as well as computers searched. Examining footage from video surveillance cameras in the office and around the building, this short investigation examines the IOF’s raid and exposes the violent practices of the IOF against Palestinian human rights organisations.
In the early hours of 18 August 2022, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) raided the offices of seven Palestinian human rights organisations. The raid followed the widely rejected and condemned designation of six of these organisations as ‘terrorist organisations’ by the Israeli Ministry of Defence in October 2021.
Shortly after 3:00 am, the IOF arrived on Rukab Street, a main road leading into central Ramallah. Composed of at least nine military vehicles and at least sixteen occupation soldiers of different units, the military convoy blocked the road in front of Al-Haq’s office building.
To secure the premises, Al-Haq had installed motion-activated CCTV cameras recording events in and around their offices. Working with Al-Haq’s newly established Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit, Forensic Architecture located, mapped and synchronised the sporadic CCTV footage of the incident, as well as additional footage obtained from nearby shops on Rukab Street.
We reconstructed a timeline of events by verifying and correcting the time stamps and meta data attached to the videos.
The footage shows that the IOF violently broke into the office building and spent over an hour inside Al-Haq’s office, appearing to be led by Special Reconnaissance Forces. While some Israeli soldiers searched through Al-Haq’s organisational and administrative documents, others appeared to socialise—taking trophy photos and group selfies as an act of domination and insult to the premises.
Before leaving, the IOF sealed the front door of Al-Haq’s office with a welded metal sheet, attaching a document with the falsely declared ‘terrorist’ designation of the organisation, reinforcing its order to defund, smear and silence the work of Al-Haq.
This military raid of the organisation is the most recent incident in a range of physical and digital attacks against Al-Haq and colleagues of the organisation. Such attacks seek to stifle the ability of Palestinian civil society to monitor and document Israeli apartheid practices and hold Israel accountable for crimes committed against the Palestinian people. Working with the Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit at Al-Haq, we oppose and resist these attempts by exposing the violence committed.