How Human Rights Watch Killed a Report Calling Israel’s Denial of Palestinians’ Right of Return a Crime Against Humanity

HRW Israel-Palestine Director Resigns After Leadership Shelves Report on Palestinian Right of Return

Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, resigned effective Monday after nearly a decade at the organization, protesting a decision by senior leadership to shelve a report that concluded Israel’s long-standing denial of Palestinian refugees’ right of return constitutes a crime against humanity.

The 43-page report had completed Human Rights Watch’s full internal review process, including evaluations by the organization’s legal team and divisions covering refugees, international justice, and the rights of women and children. That review unfolded over seven months and resulted in approval. However, roughly two weeks before its scheduled publication on December 4, incoming Executive Director Philippe Bolopion halted the report. Shakir said he was informed of the decision by phone.

The report was based on interviews with 53 Palestinian refugees and fieldwork conducted in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It traced forced expulsions beginning in 1948 through to the present, linking them to the recent depopulation of refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank. Shakir said he hoped the report would help “open a path to justice for Palestinian refugees.”

Bolopion’s decision followed objections raised by a senior Human Rights Watch official. In his resignation email, Shakir said one senior leader warned that the report would be perceived as advocating to “demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.”

“I’ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I’ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances,” Shakir told Drop Site. “I have lost faith in our senior leadership’s fidelity to the core way that we do our work—at least in the context of Israel and Palestine.”

Milena Ansari, a Palestinian assistant researcher and the only other member of HRW’s Israel-Palestine team, also resigned.

“The refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told,” Shakir said.

In response to questions from Drop Site, Human Rights Watch said in a written statement that publication was paused due to concerns about the report’s legal and factual grounding.

“The report in question raised complex and consequential issues,” HRW said. “We concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards. The process is ongoing.”

Internal objections and leadership intervention

In late November, Shakir briefed Bolopion on the report alongside a Middle East and North Africa (MENA) deputy director and a legal reviewer. During that call, senior leadership argued for delaying publication.

According to internal emails obtained by Drop Site, Bolopion was ultimately persuaded by other senior leaders to stop the report, despite its completion of the formal review process and backing from much of the organization.

One of the most significant objections came from Bill Frelick, director of HRW’s Refugees and Migrants Division. Frelick’s department had formally approved the report, and donors, journalists, and external partners had already been informed of its planned release. Nonetheless, on November 25, Frelick contacted Bolopion directly outside the standard review process to raise concerns.

In an email obtained by Drop Site, Frelick cited what he described as “substantive legal and strategic issues.”

“I am not objecting to our position that the Right of Return is a human right and that denying it is a human rights violation,” Frelick wrote. “I do not think, however, that we have strong grounds for asserting that the denial of this right is a crime against humanity.”

Frelick also questioned the strategic value of advocating in 2025 for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to reclaim homes lost in 1948. He raised doubts about whether Israel’s denial of return met the legal threshold of “intentional” infliction of suffering, suggesting that Israel’s motivations—such as national security or demographic considerations—might render the harm incidental rather than deliberate.

He further questioned whether the claims of refugees’ descendants weaken over time, whether citizenship in other countries affects those claims, and whether Palestinian refugees’ claims are unique compared to other displaced populations.

Shakir said disagreements over legal analysis are common within HRW and are normally resolved by the organization’s legal department. In this case, two legal reviewers had approved the report during the review process.

One of them, Jim Ross, later wrote a memo suggesting the report could be strengthened by including more detailed examples of refugee suffering to better support its legal conclusions. Ross also noted that then–Chief of Programs Tom Porteous believed refugee testimony alone might not persuade skeptical audiences.

Staff backlash and institutional crisis

After the report was shelved, staff across the organization attempted to revive its publication. Internal emails described leadership’s intervention as a circumvention of HRW’s established processes that threatened the organization’s credibility.

Senior leadership rejected those efforts. Staff were told the report could move forward only if its scope were narrowed to Palestinians displaced since 2023 within the occupied territories—excluding refugees from 1948 and 1967 living abroad.

Around 200 staff members signed a letter protesting the decision. On January 20, the MENA division held an all-staff meeting attended by more than 300 employees, many expressing anger and alarm.

“We are losing the organization we love and are so passionate about,” one staff message read. Another warned that HRW’s work in the region would be “severely undermined” if the crisis became public.

Two days later, Bolopion held a town hall meeting, limiting staff questions to about 10 minutes and disabling the chat function. “The pipeline is not sacred,” he said, referring to HRW’s internal review process.

Bolopion said he had concerns about the legal finding but relied on advice from senior staff. He added that he did not feel an urgent need to publish the report, citing the lack of an immediate advocacy opportunity. He later announced that HRW would hire the law firm Jenner & Block to review its internal processes.

Broader fallout

Several longtime HRW staff members, speaking anonymously, described the decision as a “watershed moment” that has deeply demoralized employees and set a troubling precedent.

Former HRW Executive Director Ken Roth publicly defended Bolopion, arguing that the report relied on a “novel and unsupported legal theory” and had been rushed during a leadership transition.

Former MENA Director Sarah Leah Whitson, who hired Shakir in 2016 and now leads Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), criticized the decision as another example of what she called HRW’s “Israel exception.”

“Work critical of Israel is subjected to exceptional review and arbitrary processes that no other country work faces,” Whitson told Drop Site.

In his final email to colleagues, Shakir wrote that Israel-Palestine has become a test case for institutional integrity. “There’s a thing about ‘Palestine exceptionalism,’” he wrote. “It often opens the door to other unprincipled compromises.”

Source: Dropsite