Palestinian Authority blocks registration of legal aid group

The Palestinian Authority has blocked the registration of a legal advocacy group representing critics and opponents detained in Palestinian prisons, the group said on Friday, a move condemned as the authority’s latest effort to stifle civil society in the occupied West Bank.
Without proper registration, the group, Lawyers for Justice, could lose access to its funds and be forced to close. The organisation was told it had violated the law by engaging in non-profit work and accepting foreign aid despite being registered as a “civil corporation,” said director Mohannad Karaje.
Palestinian security forces refused to renew the registration even though Lawyers for Justice has operated as a civil corporation without issue for years, he added. The New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch on Thursday described the authority’s bureaucratic explanation as a thinly veiled attack on a group that has represented torture victims and helped document the self-rule government’s arbitrary arrests of critics to crush dissent.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian security services did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Karaje denounced the move as a sign of the authority’s increasingly autocratic rule and a warning for groups fighting abuses in the West Bank.