Legal Knowledge is a Resouce for Claiming Individual and Communal Rights
LEAP has provided legal aid to West Bank Palestinians since 2018 to help them protect their rights to freedom of movement. From 2018 until July 2025, LEAP
concentrated it work on legal aid for West Bank Palestinian workers who came to Israeli daily to work and returned to the West Bank late on the same day. LEAP also provided legal aid to West Bank Palestinians who were refused permits to travel outside of the West Bank. LEAP continues to provide legal aid to workers, but on a reduced scale due to the present prohibition on entry of Palestinian workers that was declared by government.
LEAP has started a pilot project with the assistance of financial contributions from New Israel Fund, to provide legal aid for West Bank Palestinians attacked by Israeli settlers. The number and intensity of the attacks on West Bank Palestinians have grown rapidly. On the West Bank there is an extreme shortage of legal aid for Palestinians to pursue legal sanctions to deter violence and sanction the offenders.
Violent Israeli settlers intent on harassing and expelling Palestinians trespass into Palestinian towns, villages, and rural settlements (where Palestinian farming and herding take place) to inflict havoc. The attackers burn homes and vehicles, openly carry weapons, threaten and shoot at Palestinian residents, sometimes killing or seriously injuring them.
The Israeli police rarely arrest settlers for attacking Palestinians, rarely investigate complaints filed by Palestinian victims of settler violence and rarely file criminal indictments against violent settlers.
Available but rarely used legal sanctions
Given the lack of law enforcement, LEAP decided to focus its resources on legal actions against violent settlers using special legal processes that do not require participation by Israeli law enforcement authorities, but only the authority of the Israeli courts. These include 1) suits for issuance of court orders against violent settlers directing them not to enter or travel close to Palestinian residential areas, 2) prosecution of private criminal proceedings against violent settlers, and 3) filing of civil suits for payment of monetary compensation by those responsible for causing the injuries to Palestinians.
LEAP’s legal work starts when notification of a significant attack has been received.
LEAP sends a lawyer or field investigator to the site to document the events, interview victims and witnesses and photograph damage. Later we send a licensed damage assessor to produce an expert report. Depending on the results of our investigation, LEAP’s lawyers will decide whether to file a claim in the Israeli civil court in Jerusalem. Palestinian courts do not have jurisdiction to hear claims against Israelis of Israeli legal entities. LEAP is currently litigating a civil suit for payment of compensation for damages caused by West Bank settlers who attacked the Palestinian town of Hawara located in the north of the West Bank. LEAP represents nine Palestinian families.
Absence of Affordable Legal Service
Within Israel, legal assistance for Israelis who cannot afford a lawyer is provided by state legal aid departments. But West Bank Palestinians are not entitled to Israeli state legal assistance in administrative or civil proceedings, even though they are subject to Israeli law applied in the Occupied Territories. The Palestinian Authority lobbies the Israeli government to increase the number of permits issued to workers, but it does not provide legal aid to workers who have trouble getting or retaining permits.
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Most West Bank Palestinians cannot afford to pay for legal advice or representation. A West Bank Palestinian who holds an entrance permit to work in Israel, and then suddenly the permit is revoked, cannot afford to pay legal fees. In addition, without a presently valid entry permit, he or she cannot travel to a law office in Israel to seek legal representation. LEAP addresses these problems by providing legal aid at its office in the West Bank.
LEAP's track record is shown in the assistance provided to Palestinian workers
The project's attorneys meet the workers who request legal aid at their office in the West Bank town Hawarra.
During the past three years, LEAP's lawyers filed agency requests or court petitions for hundreds of West Bank Palestinians.
70% of the workers who received legal aid obtained permits previously denied or revoked.
The high rate of reversal shows that most of the denials and revocations of work permits were unsupported by facts or that the presentation of additional facts yielded a positive result.
This is a key point for understanding the rationale for providing legal aid to Palestinian workers – in most cases, legal representation helps restore a family’s livelihood, but workers can’t afford it.