Injustices and discrimination in the Holy Land
Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Society St. Yves. From justice comes peace
It is the only Catholic-based NGO that offers legal protection to Palestinians in the Holy Land: the St. Society. Yves, active from 27 years and with two locations, in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it is increasingly a reference in cases of injustice and discrimination.
Penalties in healthcare, lack of permits to enter Israel, demolitions of houses and schools, land confiscations: These are the problems of Palestinians and residents of Jerusalem that the St. Society deals with every day. Yves. Founded in 1991, is the only Catholic organization for human rights in the Holy Land. He was the Latin patriarch of the time, mons. Volerla to Michel Sabbah, on the proposal of the woman who later became its first director, Lynda Brayer. «We were at the end of the first intifada and there was a need for human rights organizations», explains the current director, the lawyer Raffoul Rofa.
The first case handled by St. Yves fu nel 1991 against the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Gas masks were also requested to be distributed to Palestinians in the West Bank, given that a chemical attack from Iraq was feared. The Supreme Court granted the petition and ordered the military to distribute gas masks. From that moment on, the action of the organization began, which every year provides legal assistance to thousands of people in different fields, from health, to freedom of movement, to discrimination in tax matters. Today «St. Yves» has twenty-five employees, including ten lawyers, in the two offices in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
The organization takes its name from Saint Ivo of Brittany, a 13th century aristocrat and doctor of law, famous defender of the poor and considered the patron saint of lawyers. «We operate in East Jerusalem – continues Rofa – and in Area C of the southern West Bank (subjected to the full control of the Israeli military administration – ndr). In East Jerusalem we deal with legal issues relating to Palestinian residency and family reunification". After the Six Day War (1967), Israel has in fact granted the Palestinians of Jerusalem the status of "permanent resident", but a law enacted later establishes that the Palestinian who has left Jerusalem for seven years, not necessarily continuous, or who has acquired another citizenship through naturalization, may have his or her residency status revoked.