On 19 October 2021, Israeli Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, announced the designation of six leading Palestinian civil society organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as “terrorist organizations” under Israel’s Anti-Terrorism Law 2016. The groups named are Addameer; Al-Haq; Defense for Children – Palestine; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees; Bisan Center for Research and Development; and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

While this latest move by the Israeli government is part of an alarming trend that is designed to try to stop the work of human rights organisations and human rights defenders, the timing and method of the designation suggests that it is also an effort to legitimate the surveillance and infiltration of the devices of Palestinian human rights defenders using Pegasus spyware, as discovered by a Front Line Defenders forensic investigation (see timeline below).