Suppressing Dissent: Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression and Palestine-Israel

Civic space is shrinking across the globe. Every year, human rights defenders, humanitarians, social justice activists, and their organizations face new threats in their ability to advocate for change, organize campaigns, or protest against oppressive policies. Nowhere is this crisis of civil society more acute than in the context of dissent and speech related to Palestine–Israel.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, civil society actors face mass surveillance, movement restrictions, arrests, and physical assaults. In Israel, various legal mechanisms are used to restrict speech and protest, and an organized campaign is under way to limit review of these measures by the judiciary. Meanwhile, in the United States, public and private efforts have been deployed to prohibit advocacy in support of human rights for Palestinians on college campus, in the public square, and online.

The opening of the article. The full text is at Carnegie Endowment.