Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)

Profile

Country/TerritoryPalestinian Authority
Websitehttp://www.pngo.net/
FoundedSeptember 1993
In their own words"PNGO is guided by the networks clear mission, where the national, developmental roles of NGOs go alongside with the building of a Palestinian democratic, civil society based on social justice, the sovereignty of law, and the respect of human rights."

Funding

  • The organization does not publish financial information, reflecting a lack of transparency.
  • In 2021-2024, the European Union is granting €588,299 to PNGO to “mitigate and reverse the shrinking space trends, to amplify the Palestinian narrative and the effectiveness of Palestinian advocacy efforts.”
    • In 2017-2020, PNGO was an implementing partner on a €261,914 project funded by the European Union.
  • In 2022, PNGO was an implementing partner on a $3,853,485 project funded by Italy with the World Health Organization and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS)
    • In May 2019, PMRS President Mustafa Barghouti attended a memorial event organized by the PFLP. It centered on PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who, according to information posted by the PFLP, “contributed to the establishment” of several PFLP-affiliated NGOs. The hall was decorated with PFLP paraphernalia.
    • In January 2019, Barghouti participated in a conference organized by the PFLP titled “The crime of normalization and ways of confrontation,” which was held “in honor of the 11th anniversary of the departure of its founder, Dr. George Habash.” During the conference, Barghotui presented a paper on “The role of parties and factions in promoting the boycott concept.”
  • In 2022, PNGO received CHF 186,200 from Switzerland.
    • In November 2023, Switzerland (FDFA) announced it was ending its funding to PNGO over breach of FDFA’s Code of Conduct. Swiss media, citing FDFA’ s Head of Communications, revealed the reason was the PNGO’s problematic attitudes towards  violence.

Activities

PNGO’s Ties to Terrorism

  • On December 22, 2019, PNGO, Al-Dameer, and the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) organized a conference on “international accountability mechanisms,” featuring a speech by PFLP Prisoners Committee official ‘Alam Ka’abi. Ka’abi was sentenced to nine life sentences in 2004 for his role in recruiting and sending terrorists to a number of attacks in the early 2000s, resulting in the deaths of several Israeli citizens and injuring dozens.
  • On December 20, 2017, PNGO organized a conference on “Palestinian reconciliation.” PFLP official Rabah Muhana was a guest speaker. Mahana is referred to on the PFLP’s official website as a “Member of the Front’s political bureau and one of the most prominent national leaders in the Gaza strip…he was known for his adherence to national principles, the right of return and resistance.” Mahana joined the PFLP in 1979 and was arrested by Israel multiple times, one of them in 2001 in the wake of the assassination of Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Zeevi, carried out by the PFLP.
  • In October 2014, PNGO co-organized a conference with the PFLP’s “Preparatory Committee” and the National Initiative Movement. One of the speakers at the event was the PFLP’s Jameel Mazhar, who “called… for escalating the mass popular resistance against the Zionist occupation, foremost of which is armed resistance, as the most effective way to confront the occupation.” PNGO’s former director Mohsen Abu Ramadan also spoke at the event, adding “it is necessary to leave the negotiations [with Israel] and take the decisions of war and peace collectively.”

PNGO Staff Ties to the PFLP

Defense of Terrorism

  • In May 2023, PNGO released a statement “hold[ing] the Israeli occupation authorities fully accountable for the martyrdom of prisoner 44-years-old Khader Adnan…PNGO noted that this crime affirms the length of insolence and vanity and the premeditated decision to assassinate Adnan, and it reveals the true despicable face of the occupation’s actions against our prisoner…”
  • In November 2021, PNGO “condemn[ed]” the decision of the British government to declare Hamas a terrorist organization.
  • In January 2020, PNGO vehemently opposed a new clause in European Union grant contracts with Palestinian NGOs that prohibits grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. According to media reports, PNGO claimed that Palestinian terrorist organizations are “political parties.”
  • In June 2017, PNGO condemned Norway for pulling funding from a youth center named after Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who in 1978 murdered 37 civilians, including 12 children. PNGO referred to Mughrabi as a “Palestinian Woman Freedom Fighter,” stating that “PNGO believes this is another form of foreign domination and oppression calling Palestinian resistance a terrorist resistance against Israeli occupation…PNGO stands strong against conditional funding, especially when it threatens Palestinian right to resist foreign domination, exploitation, oppression and occupation” and that “there is a difference between freedom fighters and terrorists” (emphasis added).
  • In April 2017, PNGO called on the international community not to “use aid to undermine legitimate Palestinian resistance.” According to PNGO, “We reject all de-legitimization or criminalization of lawful Palestinian resistance, whether in form of allegations of terrorism, anti-semitism or otherwise… We call on all governments and aid providers to respect our right to lawful resistance, support Palestinian human rights defenders, and ensure equal, impartial and transparent access to funding for all.”
  • In 2007, PNGO played a leading role in a boycott of USAID funding, following US government demands that NGO grantees sign anti-terrorism clauses as part of their funding agreements. As part of this campaign, PNGO wrote that the anti-terror clause “ignores the legal Palestinians’ right of resistance against the Israeli occupation.” An unnamed PNGO official also commented, “They are telling us what to do and they interfere in internal politics,” describing the US list of terror groups as an attempt to “create internal conflict among Palestinians.” According to a 2013 study commissioned by the UN, PNGO “stated that its members would not sign funding agreements that included the ATC [Anti-Terror Certificate]: this is now a condition for membership under PNGO byelaws [sic]” (emphasis added).

Demonization of Israel

  • PNGO rhetoric includes accusing Israel of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “collective punishment,” “genocide,” “war crimes,” and “Bantustans,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
  • PNGO aided in the drafting of the NGO Code of Conduct, which endorses a rejectionist approach, obliging signatory NGOs “to be in line with the national agenda without any normalization activities with the occupier [Israel], neither at the political-security nor the cultural or developmental levels” (emphasis added).
  • In January 2024, PNGO was a signatory on a statement claiming that States have a “legal obligation not just to ‘take measures to prevent’ but also ‘to punish the crime of genocide, including by enacting relevant legislation and punishing perpetrators.’”
  • In November 2023, PNGO denied the abundance of evidence that Hamas systematically exploited Al-Shifa Hospital and other medical centers in Gaza for command and control centers, terror tunnels, weapons storage, hiding kidnapped hostages, and murdering kidnapped hostages,alleging a violent war against the Palestinian people, and specifically the Gaza Strip is continuing…the barbaric attack on the Al-Shifa complex in Gaza City…under baseless excuses and pretexts…” According to PNGO, “What happened in Al-Shifa medical complex goes beyond a flagrant transgression and is an absolute war crime.” According to PNGO, “The In October 2023,  in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, PNGO published a statement demanding “National unity to combat the challenges and to supply international protection to the Palestinian people.” According to the statement, “We in PNGO salute this honorable image that our people are sketching.” The statement further called for the world to “see the true reality, which is that the Palestinian people have been facing, for more than 75 years, a racist, fascist occupation…The Palestinian people are living in a national liberation phase and do not deal with the illusions of peace that is based on imposing a fait accompli. They are resisting this with all valor and sacrifice.” (translated from the original Arabic by NGO Monitor).
  • In October 2023, PNGO was a signatory on a statement calling to “emphasize that the root causes of these events is the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.” According to the statement, “We consider the flagrant unconditional support the U.S and European officials are offering Israel occupation while ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people as complicity in Israeli human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including the crime of apartheid. It is the international community’s failure to hold the Israel occupation accountable for its crimes that have led to the current situation.”
  • In October 2023, PNGO was a signatory on a letter to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan to “Issue Arrest Warrants, Investigate Israeli Crimes and Intervene to Deter Incitement to Commit Genocide in Gaza.”
  • In May 2023, following comments by the EU Commission President celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, PNGO was a signatory on a statement accusing the president of “using racist anti-Palestinian tropes and denying Palestinian history and the atrocities of the Nakba.”
  • In April 2023, PNGO was a signatory on a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General urging the UN to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. According to the letter, the IHRA definition “opens the door to labeling as antisemitic… findings of major Israeli, Palestinian and global human rights organizations that Israeli authorities are committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.”
    • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • In February 2023, PNGO was a signatory on a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite your investigation into the Situation in Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
  • In August 2022, following criticism against the UN Commission of Inquiry’s use of antisemitic rhetoric, PNGO signed a joint statement “extend[ing] their full support and pledg[ing] their ongoing cooperation with the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine.” The statement affirmed that “the present Commission is a crucial step toward the recognition and remedy of Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime as the root cause of Israel’s perpetual violations of international law in Palestine.”
    • In July 2022, Commissioner Miloon Kothari made antisemitic comments on a podcast, claiming that the “Jewish lobby” controls social media and questioned whether Israel should have UN membership. In a letter to UNHRC President Federico Villegas, Commissioner Navi Pillay refused to condemn Kothari’s remarks, stating his comments “have deliberately been taken out of context…[and] deliberately misquoted.” Dozens of countries, UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, and HRC President Federico Villegas condemned these remarks.
  • In February 2022, PNGO hosted an EU-funded conference, titled ”Shrinking Civic Space for Palestinian Civil Society Organizations: Local and International Policies” that included a workshop “focused on the strategies and mechanisms needed to combat counter-terrorism policies, regulations, and policies (sic)” (emphasis added).
  • In October 2021, PNGO and the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) issued a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations, referring to the decision as a “sinister, unprecedented, and blanket attack on Palestinian human rights defenders and civil society organizations.” According to the statement, “The designations represent an unprecedented and ominous attempt by the Israeli occupying authorities to silence and criminalize Palestinian CSOs that challenge Israel’s prolonged military occupation, entrenched settler-colonisation and apartheid of Palestine.”
  • In May 2021, PNGO hosted an “International Stand in Solidarity with the Holy City” to “express solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel’s racist and apartheid policies.”
  • In March 2021, PNGO “welcomed the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC)” to open an official investigation into alleged crimes committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. According to PNGO, “The network considered that this investigation represents a critically important step towards ending impunity and upholding the international rule of law. PNGO called for the necessity of filing issues that fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC including victims of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip in 2014, the colonial settlement, the prisoners in the Israeli prisons, in addition to other related issues.”
  • In January 2021, PNGO, alongside a number of Palestinian organizations, issued a declaration that the “Vaccine Roll-Out Exposes Israel’s Inhumane Acts of Apartheid.” The NGOs falsely claim that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control,” while altogether ignoring that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; and that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policy for its population.
  • In July 2020, PNGO was a signatory on an urgent appeal to the United Nations referring to Israel’s alleged “shoot-to-kill policy” as “contributing to the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid regime of systematic racial oppression and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole, which, embedded in a system of impunity, prevents Palestinians from effectively challenging Israel’s apartheid policies and practices.”
  • In May 2020, PNGO signed a statement referring to the Nakba as being “far from a distant memory for the Palestinian people: it is an ongoing reality of Israeli settler-colonialism, population transfer, apartheid, and dispossession, policies which have never ended and continue to be entrenched today.” The statement further called to “take effective legal and political measures to eradicate colonialism, to bring perpetrators of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice at the ICC, and to publicly recognise and collectively overcome Israel’s apartheid regime imposed over the Palestinian people as a whole.”

Apartheid Rhetoric

  • In January 2023, PNGO was a signatory on a “historic call to intensify global pressure to dismantle Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid.” According to the call, “The Israeli apartheid system is a tool of the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine…Zionism, which arose in the context of European imperialist and colonial expansion, is the intellectual and ideological basis of settler-colonialism in Palestine. It is a racist, genocidal ideology that encourages terrorism and fascism, as our people has witnessed for 74 years.” The statement called for “the UN, states and political parties worldwide to designate Israel as an apartheid state and, accordingly, to impose on it legal, military-security, commercial, financial, academic, cultural and sports sanctions, just as was done against the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa.”
  • In September 2022, PNGO endorsed a campaign titled “Investigate and Dismantle Apartheid.” The campaign is a “global Palestinian-led anti-apartheid effort…directed towards activating UN mechanisms to investigate and dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime by mobilizing grassroot efforts.”
  • In September 2022, PNGO was a signatory on a call to the UN General Assembly to “Take Immediate and Effective Action to End Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.”   According to the call, “Dismantling Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians must be central to the UN’s commitment to end racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance worldwide.”

BDS Activities

  • PNGO is a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the coordinating body for the BDS campaign.
  • PNGO has opposed negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, in part because “at a time when the struggle is intensifying on various levels toward strengthening the boycott campaign, which has started to yield results, ‘the negotiations will lead an end to this.’”
  • In January 2024, PNGO was a signatory on a call to “Ban Genocidal Apartheid Israel from the Olympics.” According to the call, “To allow Israel, in the midst of a genocide, to participate in the upcoming Olympic games would signal to the international community that the IOC approves of the gravest of war crimes.”
  • In September 2022, PNGO was a signatory on a letter to the European Union to “review its decision to revive the Association Council Meeting, stop the recently signed gas deal and review its bilateral cooperation programmes.” According to the call, “Instead of allowing Israel to entrench its colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, rewarding it with further economic cooperation and trade of harmful military equipment and technologies, the EU and its Member States have an obligation, and interest, to hold Israel accountable and put an end to impunity.”
  • In August 2021, PNGO signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
  • In May 2021, PNGO was a signatory on a statement calling to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspend free-trade agreements with Israel,” and “Ensure that individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid are brought to justice.”
  • In May 2021, PNGO participated in a rally with a “united demand for sanctions and arms embargo on Israel.” According to the rally’s statement, “Palestinian trade unions are calling on our brothers and sisters in the trade union movement internationally to stop handling goods imported from or exported to Israel. The trade union movement has a proud history of direct action against apartheid in South Africa, Let’s build a new anti-apartheid movement to end Israel’s impunity.”
  • In September 2020, PNGO called for the UN General Assembly to “Launch international investigations into Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, as well as associated State and individual criminal responsibility,” to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” and “Prohibit all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and ensure that companies refrain from and terminate business activities with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.”
  • In July 2020, in response to the “Report of the Special Rapporteur addressing Israel’s Collective Punishment Policy,” PNGO called on “Third States to adopt effective measures to put an end to Israel’s illegal and inhumane policies of collective punishment, including sanctions and countermeasures, to bring the illegal situation to an end” (emphasis added).
  • In May 2020, PNGO was a signatory on a statement calling for “Immediate targeted sanctions to stop Israel’s annexation and apartheid.” The statement further called for “A ban on arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspension of trade and cooperation agreements with Israel,” and “Investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid.”
  • In November 2019, PNGO signed a statement calling for the “international community to immediately impose sanctions on the State of Israel and illegal Israeli settlements” and “implement domestic legislation to prohibit and criminalize the import of illegal settlement goods and services into their territory.”
  • In May 2019, PNGO was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke a joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
  • In 2018-2019, PNGO lobbied in support of the discriminatory UN blacklist of businesses supposedly operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
  • In November 2007, PNGO was one of the organizers of the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel. One of the strategies put forth at the conference is to “Emphasize that the BDS campaign does not only target Israel’s economy, but challenges Israel’s legitimacy, being a colonial and apartheid state, as part of the international community. Therefore, efforts are needed not only to promote wide consumer boycotts, but also boycotts in the fields of academia, culture and sports” (emphasis added).

European Legal Support Center (ELSC)

Key Members

Partners

  • PNGO leads the Advocacy Working Group (AWG) of the UN Humanitarian Country Team which acts as the “senior humanitarian coordination policy and decision making forum on issues related to advocacy, access, humanitarian programming and response.” The AWG also works to “develop[] common messaging on humanitarian concerns, focused on increasing respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and improving the protection of civilians…. altering the policies and practices creating humanitarian needs in the oPt…preventing forced displacement and forcible transfer and ensuring freedom of movement and humanitarian access.”
  • PNGO is a member of the UN WASH Cluster.

2016-2024 Funding to PNGO

DonorAmountYear(s)
European Union€588,2992021-2024
€446,4852016-2019
€261,9142017-2020
SwitzerlandCHF 145,1562019
CHF 113,2232018
CHF 19,9982017
Norwegian People's AidNOK 13,155,9862018
NOK 13,398,6552017
NOK 12,355,0232016

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