Israel’s actions since the start of the war in banning UNRWA and restricting the activities of NGOs and UN agencies helping Palestinians have been well publicised. But this policy of targeting aid organisations can be traced back years early. In October 2021 Israel designated six West Bank Palestinian civil society organisations as terrorist organisations without any evidence. Previously, the director of the Health Work Committees Shatha Odeh and its Spanish worker Juana Ruiz had been imprisoned, and their organisation declared illegal.
Ubai Aboudi is the director of a research NGO: his phone is hacked with Pegasus. Tahreer Jaber is the director of a women’s NGO: she and her family are threatened and harassed. All of them know they can be arrested anytime.
In this moving film, we hear from the aid workers targeted, arrested and imprisoned. How long can they continue carrying out their task in serving their people and defending human rights in Palestine’s shrinking civil and physical space?