• Gaza City-based Palestinian rights organization
• Condemns Israeli anti-terror measures

Founded in 1995 by Palestinian lawyers and human rights activists, the Gaza City-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) defines itself as "an independent legal body … dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law, and upholding democratic principles in the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Headed by attorney Jonathan Kuttab, PCHR has Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and is an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation of Human Rights, and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network.

PCHR receives funding from the Ford Foundation; NOVIB (Holland); the Open Society Institute; Christian Aid; the Canadian Auto Workers' Social Justice Fund; Dan Church Aid (Denmark); Grassroots International; the European Commission; the Royal Danish Representative Office; the Representative Office of Norway; and Ireland Aid.

Depicting Palestinians as innocent victims of relentless Israeli brutality, PCHR press releases regularly accuse Israel -- often on scanty evidence -- of perpetrating "extrajudicial executions"; "mass arbitrary arrests and humiliation"; "harassment and violence"; "war crimes"; "torture"; "inhumane treatment"; and "gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law." Conversely, they make no mention of Palestinian acts of violence, and fail to criticize the Palestinian Authority for its corruption and its complicity in organized terrorism.

On March 16, 2004, for instance, PCHR issued a press release entitled "Israel Occupying Forces Destroy a Branch Campus of al-Aqsa University in Gaza," which accused Israel of waging "continuous belligerent military attacks on Palestinian educational institutions." Though the press release implied that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had entirely decimated a university and its infrastructure, PCHR itself admitted that those charges were based only upon "preliminary investigations," unconfirmed reports by "a number of residents of the area," and unnamed "university sources." It was later learned that the Israeli military operation had actually taken place in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza, and was not at all a direct attack on the al-Aqsa University.

In an April 24, 2006 press release, PCHR referred to the IDF killing of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades operatives in Bethlehem as "extra-judicial executions" of "activists." In another press release three days later, PCHR condemned an IDF attack on Islamic Jihad terrorists who were on their way to launch Qassam rockets at Israel, and called on the international community to "intervene to stop such crimes."

In 2005, PCHR joined other Palestinian NGOs in supporting the short-lived British Association of University Teachers' boycott of Israeli universities, calling the move "an historic moment in the global movement to isolate Apartheid Israel ... [which] steals our land and ghettoizes us behind Walls in a project aimed at the expulsion of Palestinians from their land."

In 2008, PCHR became a member of the newly formed Free Gaza coalition. In this role, PCHR worked closely with the International Solidarity Movement and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.


This profile is adapted, with permission, from the NGO Monitor.