The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories – 2008 Report

The report presented here seeks to reevaluate the status of human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories in light of the Universal Declaration, now from a perspective of sixty years. It is disturbing to note that not only have the troubling trends that we cited a decade ago not diminished, they have in fact grown worse. Sixty years after the founding of Israel, human rights have not been enshrined in a constitution, and only some of them have been anchored in Basic Laws. The State of Israel has increasingly shirked its responsibility to ensure its citizens the most fundamental rights — the right to health, the right to education, the right to housing, and the right to live in dignity. Inequality is growing and socioeconomic gaps are deepening. Freedom of expression and the right to privacy face new threats. Racist trends and those that limit basic freedoms and endanger human rights have increasingly found their way into bills tabled for legislation in the Knesset. Measures have been taken that evoke concern about the erosion of democracy, including injury to the standing of the legal system, particularly the Supreme Court; threats to civil society organizations and their activists; and encroachments on the freedom of expression. Lacking in the current deliberations of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee on proposals for a constitution are effective safeguards of fundamental rights, and the standing and independence of the judiciary.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel