Double Resignation: HRW Under Fire Over Blocked Gaza Report

Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir and assistant researcher Milena Ansari have resigned after the organization halted publication of an internal report accusing Israel of committing crimes against humanity by denying Palestinian refugees the right of return, triggering a rare public rupture inside one of the world’s most influential rights groups.

The departure of Shakir, alongside assistant researcher Milena Ansari, reflects a deeper institutional strain over how HRW applies legal standards in politically sensitive conflicts. At issue is an unpublished 33-page report that documented displacement from Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and refugee communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, linking decades of denied return to prosecutable crimes under international law. The report had been slated for release on December 4, following what Shakir described as a seven-month review process.

Internal Review Meets Political Risk

According to resignation letters obtained by Jewish Currents, Shakir said HRW leadership diverged from standard procedures and acted out of concern about political backlash rather than legal rigor. In his letter dated January 15, he wrote: “I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law.”

Shakir said the draft had already cleared multiple internal checkpoints, including HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division, five subject specialists, the Program Office, and the Law and Policy Office. He added on X that the report had been uploaded to HRW’s website backend, translated, and accompanied by a prepared press package, arguing the pause came late in the process.

More than 200 HRW staff signed a protest letter warning that delaying publication risked damaging the organization’s credibility.

HRW confirmed receiving the resignations and said it had paused the report because it raised “complex and consequential issues,” adding: “In our review process, 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.”

Scope Dispute and Refugee Law

Shakir and Ansari said leadership pressure to narrow the report to recent displacement undermined its core legal argument, which connects current events to the Nakba - the 1948 expulsion of about 750,000 Palestinians and the killing of thousands. Shakir told Al Jazeera the report sought to link the destruction of camps in Gaza with displacement in the West Bank and Israel’s actions against UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, arguing that the denial of return “amounts to a crime against humanity.”

He also said HRW’s new executive director, Philippe Bolopion, feared the findings could be framed by critics as a call to alter Israel’s demographic character.

Track Record Under Pressure

Shakir spent more than 10 years at HRW documenting abuses in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, including findings that Israel operates an apartheid system against Palestinians. In 2019, Israeli authorities deported him over his advocacy work.

In a separate HRW report published in late 2024, the organization concluded that Israel had “deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in Gaza by intentionally depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths,” adding that Israeli authorities were responsible “for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide.”

Shakir noted that criticism had come from both Israeli and Palestinian sides throughout his tenure but said internal safeguards had previously ensured consistent application of the law. He wrote that while pressures had always existed, earlier review processes had protected HRW’s ability to publish evidence-based conclusions.

Leadership Transition and Credibility

The resignations land as Bolopion begins his tenure amid heightened scrutiny of HRW’s Israel-Palestine portfolio, exposing fault lines inside the organization at a moment when Gaza, refugee rights, and international accountability are under sustained global attention.