INTRODUCTION

The Jerusalem Human Rights Consortium (JHRC), is a consortium of four leading Palestinian human rights organizations native of Jerusalem; The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre (JLAC), The Land Research Centre (LRC), The Saints Yves Association (St Yves) and the Women’s Centre for legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC).

The consortium is implementing the project “Protecting Marginalized Communities in East Jerusalem through legal aid, planning and advocacy”, funded by the EU East Jerusalem Programme. The overall objective of the project is to support the marginalized Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, increase their resilience, prevent forcible transfer and reinforce the Palestinian identity of East Jerusalem. Over the course of the project, the consortium and its member organizations will support the resilience of Palestinian Jerusalemite communities through the provision of legal aid, land planning assistance, and local and international advocacy efforts.

The legal aid efforts the consortium organizations will provide can be broken down into

  • House Demolitions
  • Residency Rights
  • Social & Economic Rights
  • GBV and Family Rights due to Israeli discriminatory laws and policies
  • Public Interest Cases

The JHRC is hosted by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre (JLAC), and thus JLAC acts as the legal representative of the JHRC.

RATIONALE

Since occupying and eventually annexing East Jerusalem illegally, Israeli occupation authorities, through the Jerusalem occupation municipality, the Ministry of Interior and other official bodies, have sought to erase Jerusalem's Palestinian identity. The policies adopted and implemented to achieve this purpose have impacted every aspect of Palestinians' quotidian lives.

These policies are part and parcel of a larger apparatus of forcible transfer, Judaization and erasure, to which we refer here as the "**architecture of dispossession and repression**." Not only do the laws, regulations and policies upon which this architecture is formed violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law, they even contravene, on many occasions, with the Israeli Basic Laws and constitutional norms.

Besides targeting their identity, existence, civil and political rights, these policies have left the Palestinian residents in Jerusalem reeling from poverty, unemployment and social and economic disenfranchisement.

Any discussion of the situation of Palestinians in Jerusalem should have as its starting point the legal status imposed by Israel on the city's Palestinian population, that of the "permanent residents," whose residency is fragile and revocable.

In addition to the revocability of their status, Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem live under the constant threat of home demolitions, a direct consequence of systematically discriminatory planning policies that attempt to exclude Palestinians from the urban space.

The legal challenges facing Palestinians in Jerusalem have been further exacerbated over the last decade with the rise of the Israeli right, which has pushed for various laws and regulations to solidify the Israeli control over East Jerusalem.

Among the most striking manifestations of such legislations is the amendment to the Israeli Planning and Construction Law, commonly known as the Kaminitz law. The amendment provides inspection units with unprecedented powers in the realm of enforcement while also imposing harsher fines and criminal sentences to "deter" the phenomenon of "unauthorized construction." Moreover, the amendment limits the power and discretion of the Local Affairs Court, under whose jurisdiction the issue of unauthorized construction lies, by restricting the number and length of the injunctions that freeze demolition orders.

This drastic escalation requires the re-evaluation of the legal strategies to be adopted by organizations or individual attorneys active in defending the rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Above all, we argue that to confront these changes, efficient coordination among Palestinian human rights organizations is urgently needed as is, at some point, the institutionalization of such coordination. The main objectives of this desired coordination are the crystallization of a strategic legal plan with tangible outcomes, coordinating legal action, and augmenting their power to affect and challenge the Israeli legislation, policies and measures in East Jerusalem.

This does not, by any means, imply that there is a shortage of efforts focused on offering legal protection to residents affected by demolition orders, residency revocation, and general denial of rights, juveniles’ justice. Yet, these efforts are scattered, lack the proper methodology, and are geared toward case-by-case litigation and individual solutions rather than constituting a comprehensive strategy based upon coordination, cooperation and centralization. Only by formulating such a comprehensive, crosscutting strategy can we aspire to effectively confront the discriminatory, repressive and coercive legal landscape charted by Israel.

Background

Legal Status of Jerusalem

Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the United Nations and international community have not recognized the sovereignty of any country to any part of Jerusalem in the absence of a permanent peace agreement in the region. Under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine passed in November 1947, Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international regime administered by the UN. Following Israel’s establishment in May 1948, the western part of Jerusalem came under Israeli control. The eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the Old City and its historic Muslim, Jewish, and Christian holy sites, has been under Israeli military rule since the June 1967 war and is considered occupied Palestinian territory under international law, not legally part of Israel.

After it occupied East Jerusalem, Israel massively expanded the municipal boundaries of the city into the West Bank and annexed it in a move that has been repeatedly rejected as illegal by the UN, including numerous Security Council resolutions. Prior to the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in November 2017, US policy on the city was in line with the international community’s refusal to recognize any country’s sovereignty over any part of the city until a peace agreement is reached.

Israeli Policy in Occupied East Jerusalem

Since militarily occupying East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, Israel launched a demographic engineering policy to restrict and reduce the Palestinian population of the city while increasing the growth of its Jewish population, part of a plan to cement control over the entire city. In the words of the US State Department International Religious Freedom Report from 2009: “Many of the national and municipal policies in Jerusalem were designed to limit or diminish the non-Jewish population of Jerusalem.”

The “Judaization” of Jerusalem includes:

  • Severely restricting the ability of Palestinians to build or expand homes in East Jerusalem by making it almost impossible for them to obtain construction permits.
  • Demolishing Palestinian homes and other structures that are built without the permission of the Israeli authorities.
  • Revoking residency rights and social benefits of Palestinians who stay outside the city for seven years or more to study or work, or who are unable to prove that Jerusalen is their “centre of life”.
  • Systematically discriminating against Palestinian neighbourhoods when it comes to municipal planning and in the allocation of services, including education and sanitation.
  • Aggressively encouraging Jewish settlers to move to East Jerusalem in violation of international law, often evicting Palestinians from their homes in the process.
  • Building an apartheid wall on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, to sever it geographically from Palestinians in the West Bank.
  • Forcible transfer through coercive environment, with unbearable housing conditions, rental and apartments prices, centre-of-life law and ethnically engineering the city to make sure that the Palestinian population is always below certain percentages.

“On 5 February 2021, the Chamber decided, by a majority, that the Court may exercise its criminal jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, and that the territorial scope of this jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In its majority ruling, the Chamber stressed that it was not determining whether Palestine fulfilled the requirements of statehood under public international law, or adjudicating a border dispute, or prejudging the question of any future borders; it was solely determining the scope of the Court's territorial jurisdiction for the purposes of the Rome Statute, as requested. Such matters, which the Chamber did not decide, and on which my Office took no position, remain to be determined in bilateral discussions between Israeli and Palestinian authorities in the context of a negotiated agreement[1].”

Having assessed submissions from states, international organizations and other stakeholders, the Chamber was otherwise unanimous in its view that Palestine is a State Party to the Rome Statute. The majority also ruled that Palestine's referral of the Situation obliged the Office to open an investigation, the Office having determined that there existed a reasonable basis to do so in accordance with the Rome Statute criteria.

Objective: To give an expert opinion on the prospects created by the ICC confirming criminal Jurisdiction over Palestine for persecuting Israel over issues related to East Jerusalem and the Israeli’s settlements.

The JHRC is looking for an expert opinion, with a deep understanding of the peculiar situation of Palestinian Jerusalemites, to clarify, explain and provide opinion on the subject matter, which the JHRC and its partner organizations can later use to design their legal and advocacy interventions.

To best fulfill the required tasks the expert will coordinate the execution with the consortium Director and Senior Advocacy Coordinator.

The expert opinion in this issue will be delivered in English.

Complementarity: the task at hand is expected to complement the previously published studies, and not to duplicate the existing material.

OBLIGATIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EXPERT (CONTRACTOR):

DELIVERABLES

  1. Inception Report: an inception report, including a proposed strategy and outline is to be submitted within 30 calendar days of contraction. The JHRC will review, and comment on the inception report, if necessary, within 14 days of submission.

  2. Desk Review: the expert will present their initial findings, and how will their work complement with the reviewed material.

  3. Draft Opinion & initial presentation: Once the draft opinion is submitted, the expert and the JHRC will agree on an initial (online) presentation for JHRC key personnel, in which the expert will present their draft opinion, and receive feedback.

  4. Final Opinion: Based on the feedback, the expert will finalise their opinion, and submit to JHRC within 12 working days.

  5. Public presentation: Once the final opinion is approved, the expert and the JHRC will hold a presentation (preferably in person, but if impossible then online), to key stakeholders.

  6. The expert should be willing to Advise JHRC personnel on issues related to the assignment topic, during and after the submission of the final opinion

OBLIGATIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF JHRC

  1. Introduce the consultant to all relevant staff within the JHRC and its member organizations,
  2. Organizing meetings (in person or online) between the expert and key personnel;
  3. Establishing and facilitating contact with relevant field staff and contacts;
  4. Reviewing, commenting and approving the inception report;
  5. Providing reference material, when needed; and based on availability
  6. Providing feedback when and where necessary;
  7. Reviewing and approving the draft and final opinions.
  8. Meeting the relevant costs related to this ToR and as approved by both parties;

QUALIFICATION

Experts who are interested at the assignment should meet the requirements listed below.

Consultant’s experiences/qualification related to the services:

  • Strong professional background (academic and practical) in relation to law or political science, public administration, international humanitarian law and human rights law or related fields, including advanced degree and at least 15 years’ professional experience.
  • Strong knowledge of the international law, and ICC provisions and mechanisms in particular
  • Strong knowledge of the local context in Palestine, and especially in relation to East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
  • Published previous work related to the legal situation in Palestine, and especially East Jerusalem is highly preferable
  • Demonstrated track record in legal research and fact-finding missions in conflict and post conflict setting.
  • Proven command of spoken and written English language

TIMEFRAME

To be proposed by the expert in the application,

Foreseen date of delivery: 15/06/2022

OWNERSHIP, CONFIDENTIALITY, TITLE RIGHTS, & COPYRIGHTS

All ownership, title rights, copyright and other intellectual property rights, including all rights in documents, reports, written advice and so on, belong to and remain with the expert except for confidential information contained therein of JHRC, which at all times remains the property of the client. JHRC has the right and licence to use experts’ work product, including translation, publishing and dissemination. Shall the JHRC wish to use copies of experts’ written work for purposes other than those for which it is prepared, this will require written permission from the expert.

MODE OF PAYMENT

Payment will be made in three instalments, within 20 days of invoicing. 30% payment will be made upon receiving, reviewing and approval of the Inception report following the inception meeting, 40% will be made upon approval of the draft opinion and the remaining 30% will be made after successful delivery and presentation of the final opinion.

REPORTING

The contractor will work closely with the JHRC Director and the consortium team. All reports and draft documents/resources will be submitted to the JHRC Director within dates specified in the work plan as agreed during the inception meeting and stipulated in the contract. It is the responsibility of the contractor to ensure timely and quality reporting for each phase and deliverable in the assignment. The reports will be reviewed by the JHRC and input will be provided for best execution of the task at hand. Reports should be sent via email to JHRC.Dir@jlac.ps

[1] [1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=210303-prosecutor-statement-investigation-palestine

This vacancy is archived.

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