The US Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a major Palestinian legal group for prisoners and detainees along with five other charitable entities, accusing them of supporting terror groups, including Hamas’s military wing, under the pretense of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Those sanctioned include Addameer, a nongovernmental organization that was founded in 1991 and is based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Ramallah in the West Bank.
The group provides free legal services to Palestinian political prisoners and detainees in Israeli custody and monitors the conditions of their confinement.
Washington claimed that Addameer (“Conscience” in Arabic) “has long supported and is affiliated” with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
A fiercely anti-Israel Marxist-Leninist group, the PFLP’s armed wing pioneered plane hijackings in the 1970s and has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. It is proscribed as a terror group by the US, Israel, and the European Union.
Addameer did not immediately have a comment on the sanctions.
The NGO is officially non-partisan and independent, though many of those the group defends have been accused of being tied to the PFLP.
Additionally, its former director Khalida Jarrar — who was released from administrative detention in January 2025, as part of a hostage-release, ceasefire, and prisoner-release deal with Hamas — is a prominent PFLP official.
Israel, too, has alleged that Addameer funds terrorism, a claim that the United Nations previously said it could not support with compelling evidence.
Israel’s 2022 storming of Addameer’s offices, after Jerusalem designated it and five other groups as terror organizations, prompted a rebuke from the UN, which said in a statement that Israel had not provided convincing evidence to support the claim.
The UN said Addameer was conducting “critical human rights, humanitarian and development work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
In February, the Zachor Legal Institute, an Israeli-American advocacy group that says it focuses on combating antisemitism and terrorism, requested that Addameer be added to the Treasury’s sanctions list.
In a letter, which was signed by 44 other groups and addressed to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Zachor relied in part on undisclosed evidence from Israeli security sources in its call for sanctions on Addameer.
Marc Greendorfer, president of Zachor Legal Institute, said in an email to the Associated Press that his group was “very pleased to see Treasury following up on our request.”
He said the federal government should act “to prevent hostile foreign actors from spreading hate and violence in the United States. We applaud Treasury’s action and encourage Treasury to expand its focus to the other groups that we identified.”
Other entities hit with sanctions Tuesday include:
- The Gaza-based charity Al Weam Charitable Society and its leader
- The Turkish charity Filistin Vakfi and its leader
- El Baraka Association for Charitable and Humanitarian Work and its leader
- The Netherlands-based Israa Charitable Foundation Netherlands and two employees
- The Italy-based Associazione Benefica La Cupola d’Oro
All five groups, along with the named individuals, intentionally raised money for Hamas’s military wing, though some of their donors were unaware of the terror ties, according to the US Treasury Department.
A 2024 report by the Department highlighted how online crowdfunding is increasingly done under the guise of soliciting legitimate charitable donations, making it difficult to identify as terrorist financing.
Because the majority of crowdfunding activity is legitimate, “this status can make it more difficult for law enforcement attempting to investigate potential (terrorist financing) cases with a crowdfunding and online fundraising nexus,” the report said.