Aref Jaber
Aref Jaber is a photojournalist and member of the Human Rights Defenders Group in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. He is a non-violent activist against the illegal Israeli settlements. On 2 June, Atef Jaber documented by his camera the killing of Rami Sbarna, a 37 year-old Palestinian worker by Israeli soldiers while he was doing road work for the Hebron Municipality in Jaber neighbourhood in the old city near the military roadblock leading to the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
