What do human rights activists in Jerusalem, humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, and college students in New York all have in common according to Israel and its influence network? They all purportedly have links to terrorism. Although such accusations are often baseless, they are frequently used to besmirch and undercut those who are unwilling to do Israel’s bidding.
Although this is a tactic very much on display today, it is one I first came across while serving with the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) in the West Bank, when a similar pattern of accusations and complaints from Israel, as documented in a report that has not been previously disclosed, threatened to wreck what was, back then in 2008, already a tenuous peace process in the West Bank.
The USSC often acts as an unofficial broker between the Israeli and Palestinian security sectors. Despite significant progress in the delivery of security on the Palestinian side, Israel was dragging its feet, claiming a lack of confidence in the Palestinian Security Forces.
The Israelis’ basic argument was that the Palestinian Authority was not taking sufficient action against individuals Israel accused of terrorism, and therefore Israel did not have the confidence to deliver its side of the negotiations — to reduce checkpoints and IDF presence in the West Bank. With the usual public relations savvy, Israel argued both privately and in the press that the Palestinian Authority security system was nothing more than a "revolving door" in that the Palestinian Authority would arrest people Israel had claimed to be terrorists or have ties to terrorists, but then quickly release them.
The Bush administration at the time was committed to the negotiations process under the Roadmap for Peace, but with Israel threatening to halt any progress on the basis of its concerns, the U.S. decided it would have to step in and address them.
As the USSC lead for Palestinian security sector governance, I was charged with leading a study of the alleged "revolving door" problem, and with colleagues including a senior UK police officer and a Canadian military officer, conducted a thorough review of the allegations, producing an official report, which was briefed to both Palestinian and Israeli officials, and to the U.S. National Security Council.
That study, officially titled, “The Jenin Revolving Door Report,” was not a victory for any of the parties involved. Although some of the context it addressed is now somewhat dated, some of its key findings remain very relevant today, given the allegations that led to the report and the parallel pattern we see today of Israel making accusations of terrorism against individuals and organizations it views as adversaries, complaining when these accusations are not acted upon in a manner that Israel finds sufficient, and then leveraging its allegations and complaints as a part of a public relations strategy.
The report has never been publicly released. Given the passage of time, but also due to its relevance and the value of transparency, the complete text may be found here (with redactions only to protect the names of the other authors).
The report found was that there were plenty of challenges for all sides to address. For instance, when it came to the Palestinian side, the report concluded that "Palestinian law on some of the critical issues is often vague, and sometimes contradictory. The Palestinian criminal justice system is both overloaded and under-resourced."
However, more germane to the broader pattern, and the one we see today, of Israeli government weakly-sourced accusations and its subsequent complaints of inaction, are the findings of the report as it relates to Israel's approach, and in particular that:
"A final element to be considered here is the method by which Israel does transfer requests for arrest, detention, or other security actions to the Palestinian Authority. The common mechanism for this is the provision by the Israeli security establishment to elements of the Palestinian security establishment, of “lists” of targets (which may be people or institutions) and ‘actions requested,’ such as arrests or closures.
"These lists, which are not displayed in this report due to their sensitive nature, but examples of which have been viewed by the reporting team, commonly lack any evidence to substantiate the validity of the targets. Indeed, Palestinian reviews of the lists have shown many of them to be inaccurate or outdated, requesting, for example, the detention of deceased persons. These lists, then[,] represent the meeting of the thin requirements of the Israeli military and intelligence establishment with the rather more weighty ones of the Palestinian criminal justice system. The P.A. cannot simply arrest and administratively detain persons because Israel wants it done; it has processes it must follow, and these processes coincide, for the most part, with international human rights and legal best practice."
The provision of a list of names does not by itself constitute hard evidence for anything and in the experience of the U.S. Security Coordinator at the time I served in it, Israel's lists were often flawed and inaccurate, as the Revolving Door Report describes. Then, Israel refused to provide any corroborating information to substantiate its accusations, claiming that its accusations derived from sensitive intelligence sources. But even then, intelligence, as any national security official will tell you, is not evidence, and is often wrong.
Raw intelligence reporting may be the standard upon which Israel conducts detention operations — or even lethal strikes — but it does not suffice for any use by a third party, unless that third party is willing to take it on trust. In my experience, even the United States, which does tend to take Israeli allegations and claims at face value, has also developed an institutional understanding over time that there is often less to these Israeli allegations than meets the eye, like when it came to Israel's justifications for a strike in Gaza in 2021 that leveled a high rise building that multiple news agencies used as their offices, or as when, in 2022, Israel accused six Palestinian human rights organizations of terrorist ties.
In addition to recommending steps to close the gap between Israeli intelligence leads and substantiated facts that could meet evidentiary standards, the Revolving Door Report recommended that "Israel should thoroughly review its [own] current arrest and detention practices … in order to bring them into accord with international law," a recommendation that, as the UK government determined last September, it does not meet to this day.
The report also suggested a certain irony in Israel's identification of targets and complaints of inaction by third parties given the exploitation of its detention system as an intelligence tool for the purposes of serving Israeli interests:
"Israel does not try every Palestinian it detains, nor, although statistics are not available at this time, does it detain for significant periods every Palestinian it arrests. Rather, arrests and detentions form a regular part of intelligence gathering activities for the Government of Israel, and are often thought to be more pre-emptive or deterrent than they are reactive to specific threats. As Israel focuses on threats to its own state and citizens, it likely prioritizes these threats above those which are directed against the Palestinian Authority. From a Palestinian perspective, therefore, it is often seen that Israel, aside from the legality of its actions in arresting and detaining Palestinians, does itself maintain a revolving door. ..."
Today, we see similar allegations used not to derail a peace process, but to undermine the credibility of those who express concern regarding, or protest against, Israel’s violence against Palestinians.
One example can be found when Israel shuttered six Palestinian human rights organizations in 2022 amid allegations that they operated as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The Israeli government raided the offices of one of those organizations — Defense of Children International Palestine (DCIP) — one day after the United States informed Israel that it found DCIP’s reporting of the rape of a child in an Israeli detention facility credible. Many Western governments responded by cutting all ties with these organizations, only to quietly re-establish those ties several months later when Israel failed to produce any compelling evidence for its accusations.
More recently, in the context of its broader efforts to undercut the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel has again, and with much public fanfare, levied a series of allegations that 108 of UNRWA’s employees in Gaza are members of Hamas's military wing, the Izzedin al Qassam Brigades. To date, UNRWA has been unable to substantiate those accusations, and despite UNRWA’s good-faith requests as it conducts an investigation, Israel has not provided any further evidence to back up its allegations.
And now, in a continuation of this pattern which is as alarming as it is absurd, similar accusations have made their way into the U.S. legal system. In a legal filing brought in late March, Israel’s American surrogates accused the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine of having foreknowledge of Hamas’s October 7 attack. This accusation — which appears to be based on the single testimony of an Israeli hostage of a claim made by his captors— is bizarre given that Hamas didn’t even give its sponsor Iran tactical warning. Why would Hamas leaders alert some college students in New York? Regardless of the accusation’s merit, the reputational damage to SJP is done.
As the work conducted in the Revolving Door Report demonstrates when it comes to Israeli allegations of terrorism, there is often less than meets the eye. Going forward, organizations and individuals facing thinly-sourced Israeli allegations of ties to terrorism should demand substantive evidence. If Israel cannot or will not provide such evidence, it should be ignored.
