Israel to deny visas to Human Rights Watch staff

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS: Israel will stop issuing work visas to Human Rights Watch staff, the NGO said on Friday, with the Jewish state accusing the group of being "fundamentally biased" against it.

The New York-based watchdog, which has written critical reports about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, applied months ago for a visa for its Israel and Palestine director, American citizen Omar Shakir.

On February 20, Israeli authorities informed it the request had been rejected because HRW is "not a real human rights group", the group said in a statement.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon confirmed the decision to AFP.

HRW, he said, had "demonstrated time and again it is a fundamentally biased and anti-Israeli organisation with a clear hostile agenda."

But Nahshon added that the group was not banned and its Israeli and Palestinian employees would still be permitted to work in Israel and issue reports.

"But why should we give working visas to people whose only purpose is to besmirch us and to attack us?" he asked.

Israel’s government, seen as the most right-wing in the country’s history, has been accused of putting pressure on both international and local rights organisations.

"We are genuinely shocked," Shakir said in response to the Israeli decision.

"We work in over 90 countries across the world. Many governments don’t like our well-researched findings but their response is not to stifle the messenger," he told AFP.

A group of 17 NGOs on Friday released a joint statement of solidarity with Shakir and "our colleagues" in HRW.

"Neither closing Israel’s borders to human rights organisations and activists nor other measures by the Israeli government against organisations that criticise the occupation will deter us from continuing to report human rights violations in the territories controlled by Israel," they said.

HRW last year published a report, "Occupation Inc", detailing how international and Israeli companies operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank were contributing to rights abuses.