Issa Amro

Issa Amro (Arabic: عيسى عمرو; April 13, 1980) is a Palestinian activist based in Hebron, West Bank.

He is the co-founder and former coordinator (2007–2018) of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements.

Amro advocates the use nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to fight the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

He co-founded Yas in 2007 as a group that documents and protests against human rights violations.

The group's leading campaign is Open Shuhada Street, which calls for an end to the closures and restrictions enforced on Hebron's main street.

The campaign takes place in several countries worldwide.

In 2008, B'Tselem reported an occasion where Amro himself was prevented from documenting Israeli settler disturbances, after which he was then beaten and arrested by Israeli military.

Amro is the coordinator Youth Against Settlements (Yas), which he describes as his major project to involve young Palestinians in nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation.

He stated that his dream is to see nonviolence used as the methodology for a massive Palestinian resistance against the occupation.

Amro became part of B'Tselem and won the One World Media award in 2009 for the "Shooting Back" camera project, which he coordinated in Hebron.

The project distributed cameras to Palestinians for the purpose of documenting human rights violations by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

In 2010, he was declared "human rights defender of the year in Palestine" by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights In 2013, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern for his wellbeing and safety due to numerous accounts of harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers and a series of arbitrary arrests.

At present, Amro is being indicted by the Israeli military court with 18 charges against him.

In 2013, the Israeli army conducted an unannounced 'training exercise' at his home: "15 soldiers suddenly entered the family's yard at about 9pm. Wearing helmets, body armour and carrying weapons, they used a ladder to enter the house from an upstairs window."

During the surge of violence throughout the Palestinian territories in autumn 2015, Amro worked to discourage Palestinian youths from carrying out knife attacks: in their place, he advocated a nonviolent approach to resistance.

He stated that he felt more worried about being shot by the Israeli army during these times than ever before.

At the regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in September 2015, Amro said that he was "extremely concerned" with the situation in Palestine during this time and stated that "the erupting violence over the past weeks…can only end when international law is applied."

He mentioned the case of 18-year-old Hadil Hashlamoun, who on the 22 September of that year had been shot and killed by Israeli forces, and whose death was reported as "unlawful" by Amnesty International:

"'Mr. President, I was present when they took her body away, and saw the settlers and soldiers rejoice at her fate. We urgently need an impartial international investigation into her case,' Amro stated."

Amro wrote an article for the Huffington Post in response to the Hebron shooting incident in March, 2016.

A video had been published by B'Tselem showing Israeli soldier Elor Azaria shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the head at point-blank range, while the Palestinian was lying wounded on the ground.

In his article, Amro described being guarded by Azaria for seven hours during an arrest in March, which took place before the shooting incident.

Amro did not consider the soldier to be "unusually fanatical or extreme."

Instead, he blamed the normalization of anti-Palestinian hatred within the Israeli military, and Benjamin Netanyahu for "pulling verbal triggers of incitement" and denying freedom for Palestinians with his politics.

In an article written for The Nation, Amro stated, "I have been arrested more times than I can count for nonviolent human-rights work."

In May 2017, Bernie Sanders along with three U.S. senators and 32 congressmen wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to urge Israeli authorities to reconsider the charges against Amro.

In September 2017, Amro was arrested by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for using Facebook to criticise the PA for arresting a journalist.

In late September, 2017, after being released on bail, Amro met Bernie Sanders and members of Congress in Washington DC.

Amro grew up in the Hebron's Old City near Shuhada Street in an area that is now closed to Palestinians.

His father, a school teacher, moved his family into H1 during the First Intifada when Amro was seven years old, as recounted in The Way to the Spring by Ben Ehrenreich.

Two years after the start of the Second Intifada, the Israeli army declared the Palestine Polytechnic University a closed military zone and sealed off its entrances.

Amro, who was then in his last year of an engineering degree, decided to take action against the closures.

With the participation of other students of the university, Amro organized actions of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience for half a year.

These actions included protests and demonstrations, moving into classrooms, sit-ins, and having lessons in the presence of Israeli soldiers.

The campaigning was a success and the university was reopened in June.

Amro describes this victory as his gateway into resistance against the occupation.

He took inspiration from known human rights defenders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela.

He stated in a piece for The Guardian:

"'I became convinced that their non-violent method was the best strategy for community resistance. Furthermore non-violence meant that there was a role for every Palestinian. ... My campaigning, my whole philosophy, everything I do now, is underpinned by these ideas.'"

In March, 2019, Amnesty International demanded that the Palestinian authorities drop all charges against him, adding "It is disgraceful that Issa Amro is facing a prison term simply for expressing his views promoting human rights online."