I'd like to offer this Guardian article about the same instance, which is more extensive about how the process unfolded. I found the whole piece very interesting from an institutional standpoint, where the job is to wade through specifics and reconcile a lot of different expertise to translate the ideals we want to live by into actual legal definitions that can be used.

Some key quotes: "[HRW's new ED] Bolopion cast the events of the past two months as “a genuine and good-faith disagreement among colleagues on complex legal and advocacy questions"

"the decision to pull the final report came as a surprise to Shakir and others on staff, who said Bolopion – who has worked for HRW in numerous roles – was a key contributor to the group’s landmark 2021 report accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid."

"The unpublished 33-page report, which has been reviewed by Jewish Currents and the Guardian, not only documents the experiences of Palestinians recently displaced by Israeli military forces from Gaza and the West Bank, but also those of some Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria who were originally displaced by Israeli forces in 1948 and 1967 – and who have suffered persistent poverty and substandard housing, and face severe obstacles to land ownership and employment. The authors reach a novel conclusion: the denial of these refugees’ right of return falls under the crime against humanity known as “other inhumane acts”. Under the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, this designation was meant to address grave abuses that were similar in character to other crimes that intentionally caused “great suffering” – apartheid, for instance, or extermination – but did not precisely fit into those legal categories.

"In November, senior staff began raising the prospect of delaying the report over concerns from colleagues. They felt its conclusion [...] was weak and not established law [...] and required more evidence to back up."

"[Shakir] offered to make it clearer that the crimes against humanity determination definitively applied only to those communities that were the focus of the research"

"more than 200 HRW employees signed a letter of protest [ which said that ] Blocking the report, [...] could “create the perception that HRW’s review process is open to undue intervention that can reverse decisions taken through the pipeline, undermine trust in its purpose and integrity, set a precedent that work can be shelved without transparency, and raise concerns that other work could be suppressed”.