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Widespread Condemnation of Houthi Decision to Execute Yemeni Human Rights Activist

Yemeni women were attacked by members of the Houthi group in Sanaa for participating in a peaceful demonstration. (X)
Yemeni women were attacked by members of the Houthi group in Sanaa for participating in a peaceful demonstration. (X)
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Widespread Condemnation of Houthi Decision to Execute Yemeni Human Rights Activist

Yemeni women were attacked by members of the Houthi group in Sanaa for participating in a peaceful demonstration. (X)
Yemeni women were attacked by members of the Houthi group in Sanaa for participating in a peaceful demonstration. (X)

A decision by the Houthi militias to execute Fatima Al-Arouli, a Yemeni human rights activist, was widely condemned by government and human rights figures, who called on the international community to intervene to stop the group’s violations.

On Tuesday, a court controlled by the Houthis in Sanaa decided to execute the human rights activist on charges of spying for the international coalition to support legitimacy, after trial procedures that local and international human rights bodies described as politicized and unfair.

The woman was kidnapped from a checkpoint in Taiz Governorate in mid-August 2022.

The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of kidnapping thousands of women from their homes and workplaces, and from streets and checkpoints, taking them to detention centers and secret prisons, fabricating malicious charges against them, and practicing all forms of blackmail, psychological and physical torture, and sexual harassment and assault against them, because of their political, media and human rights activism.

Minister of Information Muammar Al-Eryani noted that the group, since its coup against the state, aims to limit the freedom of women and their participation in public life.

The government called on the international community, the United Nations, its special envoy to Yemen, and human rights organizations to take real action to force the Houthis to release Al-Arouli and all the kidnapped and forcibly disappeared women in illegal detention centers.

According to a document issued by the court, which was seen by the AFP, the Houthi court convicted Al-Arouli, the head of the Yemeni branch of the Arab League’s Arab Women Leadership Council, of “communicating with the UAE”, gathering military intelligence and sending key Houthi locations to the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen to be bombed.

Yemeni human rights organizations and social figures considered the death sentence against the activist to be a violation of the standards and values of justice.

A statement signed by dozens of intellectuals, activists, and social figures stated that Al-Arouli was deprived of the right to defend herself, and her lawyer was expelled in the first session of the trial, after she was detained for a year in an underground cell.

A local organization reported that since the Houthi group took control of Sanaa, that same court has issued more than 500 sentences against political opponents.

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Arab World

Israel Cracks Down on Palestinian Citizens Who Speak out against the War in Gaza

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Friday that hospitals have only two days' fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned aid delivery to the war-devastated territory is being crippled. - AFP
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Friday that hospitals have only two days' fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned aid delivery to the war-devastated territory is being crippled. - AFP
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Israel Cracks Down on Palestinian Citizens Who Speak out against the War in Gaza

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Friday that hospitals have only two days' fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned aid delivery to the war-devastated territory is being crippled. - AFP
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Friday that hospitals have only two days' fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned aid delivery to the war-devastated territory is being crippled. - AFP

Israel’s yearlong crackdown against Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza is prompting many to self-censor out of fear of being jailed and further marginalized in society, while some still find ways to dissent — carefully.
Ahmed Khalefa's life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023, The Associated Press said.
The lawyer and city counselor from central Israel says he spent three difficult months in jail followed by six months detained in an apartment. It's unclear when he'll get a final verdict on his guilt or innocence. Until then, he's forbidden from leaving his home from dusk to dawn.
Khalefa is one of more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for “incitement to terrorism” or “incitement to violence,” according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities. More than half of those investigated were also criminally charged or detained, Adalah said.
“Israel made it clear they see us more as enemies than as citizens,” Khalefa said in an interview at a cafe in his hometown of Umm al-Fahm, Israel's second-largest Palestinian city.
Israel has roughly 2 million Palestinian citizens, whose families remained within the borders of what became Israel in 1948. Among them are Muslims and Christians, and they maintain family and cultural ties to Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.
Israel says its Palestinian citizens enjoy equal rights, including the right to vote, and they are well-represented in many professions. However, Palestinians are widely discriminated against in areas like housing and the job market.
Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined, Adalah's records show. Israeli authorities have not said how many cases ended in convictions and imprisonment. The Justice Ministry said it did not have statistics on those convictions.
Just being charged with incitement to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist group can land a suspect in detention until they're sentenced, under the terms of a 2016 law.
In addition to being charged as criminals, Palestinians citizens of Israel — who make up around 20% of the country’s population — have lost jobs, been suspended from schools and faced police interrogations posting online or demonstrating, activists and rights watchdogs say.
It’s had a chilling effect.
“Anyone who tries to speak out about the war will be imprisoned and harassed in his work and education,” said Oumaya Jabareen, whose son was jailed for eight months after an anti-war protest. “People here are all afraid, afraid to say no to this war.”
Jabareen was among hundreds of Palestinians who filled the streets of Umm al-Fahm earlier this month carrying signs and chanting political slogans. It appeared to be the largest anti-war demonstration in Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. But turnout was low, and Palestinian flags and other national symbols were conspicuously absent. In the years before the war, some protests could draw tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel.
Authorities tolerated the recent protest march, keeping it under heavily armed supervision. Helicopters flew overhead as police with rifles and tear gas jogged alongside the crowd, which dispersed without incident after two hours. Khalefa said he chose not to attend.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s far-right government moved quickly to invigorate a task force that has charged Palestinian citizens of Israel with “supporting terrorism” for posts online or protesting against the war. At around the same time, lawmakers amended a security bill to increase surveillance of online activity by Palestinians in Israel, said Nadim Nashif, director of the digital rights group 7amleh. These moves gave authorities more power to restrict freedom of expression and intensify their arrest campaigns, Nashif said.
The task force is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line national security minister who oversees the police. His office said the task force has monitored thousands of posts allegedly expressing support for terror organizations and that police arrested “hundreds of terror supporters,” including public opinion leaders, social media influencers, religious figures, teachers and others.
“Freedom of speech is not the freedom to incite ... which harms public safety and our security,” his office said in a statement.
But activists and rights groups say the government has expanded its definition of incitement much too far, targeting legitimate opinions that are at the core of freedom of expression.
Myssana Morany, a human rights attorney at Adalah, said Palestinian citizens have been charged for seemingly innocuous things like sending a meme of a captured Israeli tank in Gaza in a private WhatsApp group chat. Another person was charged for posting a collage of children’s photos, captioned in Arabic and English: “Where were the people calling for humanity when we were killed?” The feminist activist group Kayan said over 600 women called its hotline because of blowback in the workplace for speaking out against the war or just mentioning it unfavorably.
Over the summer, around two dozen anti-war protesters in the port city of Haifa were only allowed to finish three chants before police forcefully scattered the gathering into the night. Yet Jewish Israelis demanding a hostage release deal protest regularly — and the largest drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of Tel Aviv.
Khalefa, the city counselor, is not convinced the crackdown on speech will end, even if the war eventually does. He said Israeli prosecutors took issue with slogans that broadly praised resistance and urged Gaza to be strong, but which didn’t mention violence or any militant groups. For that, he said, the government is trying to disbar him, and he faces up to eight years in prison.
“They wanted to show us the price of speaking out,” Khalefa said.