Shawan Rateb Abdallah Jabarin (; born 1960) is the general director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. From 2005 to 2009, Jabarin was a member of the board of directors of Defense for Children International – Palestine, the national section of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, a non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 1979.
Respected as a human-rights activist by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and various Palestinian human-rights groups, and condemned by many Israeli and other organizations, He has won multiple human-rights awards and contributed to such journals as Foreign Policy. Israel's Supreme Court has described him as a "senior activist" for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Jabarin has been barred from entering Jordan on security grounds, and was banned from international travel by Israel between 2006 and 2013.
Early life and education Jabarin was born in 1960 in the village of Sa'ir (Sayer), in the Hebron district. His family were West Bank farmers. As a young man, he was subjected to administrative detention and interrogation by Israeli authorities.
He studied sociology at Birzeit University in the 1980s, where he belonged to a student group associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Jabarin later studied law in Ireland; he is a graduate of the Irish Centre of Human Rights, NUI Galway, where he completed the LL.M programme in 2004-5 through a grant from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs' Irish Aid programme.
Career
Al Haq Jabarin began volunteering with Al-Haq while he was a student at Birzeit University. He joined Al-Haq as a field researcher in 1987. He became its director in 2006; His office is in Ramallah.
Under his leadership, according to one source, "Al Haq's staff of Palestinian and foreign researchers have shifted their search for legal redress from Israel's military and civilian courts to foreign venues."
HRW position and controversy In February 2011, Jabarin was appointed by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) to its advisory board that oversees reporting on Arab-Israeli affairs. Robert Bernstein, HRW's founding chairman and chairman emeritus, told The Daily Beast: "I am of course shocked but even more saddened that an organization dedicated to the rule of law seems to be deliberately undermining it". Bernstein said that HRW had done the "wrong thing" and that "they could have put other people on the board who would not have created this problem for them".
Stuart Robinowitz, a lawyer who had led three human-rights fact-finding missions for HRW and the American Bar Association, was described as "distressed that the appointment seems to have been made without disclosure of all the facts by two HRW executives, Middle East and North African director for HRW, Sarah Leah Whitson, and the executive director, Ken Roth". Robinowitz complained that "Whitson in her written presentation stated that Jabarin had had no association since PFLP since 1987, thereby ignoring actions against him by Israel and Jordan security authorities in 2005 and 2006, and by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007, 2008, and 2009". Robinowitz asked: "Why didn't Ms. Whitson and Mr. Roth tell the board about the court opinions in January 2011, when they were asking the board to approve Mr. Jabarin?" He accused Whitson and Roth of "misleading conduct," saying they had "put themselves above the law by assuming they can disregard the Israeli Supreme Court, which is one of the most highly respected judicial bodies in the world," and called the Jabarin incident "part of a pattern of conduct that casts doubt about Mr. Roth's and Ms. Whitson's ability to deal with matters affecting Israel in a balanced and objective manner". Robinowitz wrote: "In 2006, Jordan barred [Jabarin] entry for security reasons. Do staff members of HRW have more reliable information about Jabarin than the supreme court and security services of Jordan and Israel?"
Apropos of Jabarin's HRW appointment, Sir Harold Evans stated that "Israel's Supreme Court says Shawan Jabarin leads a double life, as a human rights activist who also has a secret association with a terrorist organization. Human Rights Watch says he does invaluable work for peace, but its founding chairman and others consider Jabarin's appointment shocking".
Gerald Steinberg, the president of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, said that Jabarin's appointment to the HRW board "ends any façade that Human Rights Watch is a moral 'watchdog' organization". The appointment, he said, "completed the transformation [of HRW] from a human rights watchdog to a radical agit-prop group". Steinberg accused Jabarin of using "the language of human rights to lead delegitimization campaigns targeting Israel" and accused HRW of "abusing human rights as a façade for radical ideology". He said that "Human Rights Watch has been working together with Jabarin and Al-Haq in an informal capacity for a long time, but the official appointment is an example of HRW Executive Director Ken Roth's and the group's Middle East and North Africa division's enlistment in the widespread delegitimization campaign being conducted against Israel".
Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post argued in February 2011 that Jabarin's appointment to the HRW board reflected "the continuing decline of the organization....This appointment is a slap in the face from HRW Executive Director Ken Roth and chairman James Hoge to terror victims, Israelis, Jews, and others who seek to uphold universal human rights". Rubin also called the appointment "the latest of numerous moral failings, scandals and biases that have exposed HRW as a political advocacy organization".
In response to criticism of HRW's appointment of Jabarin to its Middle East board, HRW's program director, Iain Levine, described the Supreme Court's charges as "curious and misguided" and insisted that Jabarin was "the reason that tyrants in the Middle East are now trembling in their boots." His description of Jabarin as "one of the leading Palestinian voices condemning … suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians" drew criticism. Ann Hertzberg, for example, commented: "I have been personally monitoring Al Haq [Jabarin's NGO] and Jabarin for nearly 5 years. I have never seen any evidence that either has condemned suicide bombings or rocket attacks." Robert Bernstein agreed, saying that he had searched unsuccessfully for evidence to support Levine's claim.
Goldstone Report and controversy
In a 2009 critique of the Goldstone Report for The Guardian, Dan Kosky focused on the report's reliance on video testimony by Jabarin, whose contributions, Kosky argued, were "overshadowed by evidence that he is 'among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organisation'." The report cited Al-Haq's allegations "at least 30 times."
Other professional activities He took part in a four-month programme on human-rights advocacy at Columbia University in 2001.
In May 2013, Jabarin was elected vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), an independent international NGO based in France. Jabarin had also been elected Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists. In August 2016, Jabarin was elected Secretary General of FIDH.
Jabarin participated in an event entitled "Palestine, Israel & International Law: The ICC and beyond" on October 11, 2013, at Trinity College in Dublin.
Arrests and imprisonments Jabarin was convicted in 1985 of recruiting for and arranging training for members of the PFLP outside of Israel and served nine months of a 24-month jail sentence. He spent six years in Israeli prison without charge or trial during the 1980s and 1990s.
1989 arrest In late October 1989, the windows on Jabarin's home were smashed and the front door kicked in. A few days later, on October 10, 1989, Israeli soldiers knocked on the door of Jabarin's home near Hebron and took him away. They allegedly blindfolded and handcuffed him, pushed a cloth into his mouth, and burned him with cigarettes on his ear and his hands. Then, it is alleged, one of them forced him down on the bathroom floor and stepped with army boots on his head, chest, and hands, He was taken to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem for examination where a doctor reportedly said he has been hit on the head and had breathing difficulties.
A 1994 Israeli statement to the UN alleged that Jabarin "had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP." A June 2007 decision by the Israeli Supreme Court called Jabarin a "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."
Jabarin has said "he had lost track of the number of times he'd been arrested and detained by Israeli authorities. He estimated that he'd spent a cumulative eight years in administrative detention and claimed to have been beaten on numerous occasions". In August 1990, Amnesty International adopted Jabarin as a prisoner of conscience. In November 1994, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention arbitrary.
Travel ban Jabarin has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan on several occasions due to alleged ties to the PFLP. Israel placed a travel ban on Jabarin in 2006, after he was made director of Al-Haq. Israel cited "secret evidence" indicating that he was still involved with PFLP. The travel ban was condemned by Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, all of which dismissed Israel's claims that it was founded on "security" considerations.
When Jabarin petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court in 2008 to lift the travel ban, the Court explained that it could not show the evidence against him to his lawyers, yet insisted that "it is reliable information according to which the petitioner is among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organization" and claimed that "the divulging of this material to the petitioner involves the exposure of important sources of information, and thus certain harm to national security." The Israeli human rights group Adalah has described it as "disturbing" that the travel ban "is based on secret information." Adalah characterized this as undermining due process.
Jabarin's lawyer in the 2008 hearings on his travel ban, Michael Sfard, quoted the opening line of Franz Kafka's The Trial in court: "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."
2009 Netherlands trip The Dutch government asked Israel in 2009 to lift the travel ban on Jabarin so that he could travel to the Netherlands to accept the Dutch Geuzenpenning Award for human rights defenders. On February 12, 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected Jabarin's petition to leave the country to participate in the awards ceremony.
While upholding the travel ban, the Court underscored that it was not meant as a "punishment" for illegal activity but as a security measure. The spokeswoman for the Court, Ayelet Filo, said that it had "real evidence" that Jabarin was "involved with terror groups." The two hearings were conducted in part with only the three judges, the State Attorney, and members of the Israeli General Security Services (GSS) present. Irish human rights organization Front Line Defenders expressed concern about the travel ban, noting that Jabarin had been allowed to leave the West Bank eight times between 1999 and February 2006, before becoming General Director of Al-Haq.
In March 2009, HRW issued a press release opposing the travel ban, in response to which the Vice Chair of HRW, film producer Sid Sheinberg, protested HRW not mentioning in the press release the Israeli Supreme Court's judgments against Jabarin. In a March 17, 2009, email to HRW officials, Sheinberg wrote that the press release was "misleading by important omission and therefore radically inaccurate."