The United States has imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel over allegations of genocide in Gaza, according to a notice posted Thursday to the US Treasury Department’s website.
The three groups — the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Ramallah-based Al-Haq — were listed under what the Treasury Department said were International Criminal Court-related designations.
The step marked a significant intensification of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the ICC case against Israel, expanding Washington’s sanction campaign from court officials to outside groups that are backing the case against Israel.
The three human rights organizations asked the ICC in November 2023 to investigate Israeli air strikes on densely populated civilian areas of Gaza, the siege of the territory, and the displacement of the population. A year later, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel has also acted against al-Haq in the past, designating it a terrorist organization over its alleged links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a leftist terror group.
The sanctions will severely curb the organizations’ ability to operate financially as any entity that even has ties to the US will be barred from donating to them and will have to sever all ties by October 4.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed sanctions on ICC judges as well as its chief prosecutor over the Israeli arrest warrants and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
The ICC, which was established in 2002, has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in its 125 member countries. Some nations, including the US, China, Russia and Israel, do not recognize its authority.
The sanctions against Palestinian NGOs were the latest in a growing series of steps that the US has taken against the Palestinians and their leadership in recent weeks. Last week, Washington announced that it was implementing visa bans against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and roughly 80 other PA officials, barring them from attending the UN General Assembly next month, along with a conference advancing a two-state solution that is supposed to take place on the sidelines.
The US has also frozen temporary visas for Gazan children and accompanying adults who have been receiving medical treatment for serious injuries sustained in the war, following an outcry from far-right, Islamophobic conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is close with the administration.
The US has also quietly instituted a blanket freeze on almost all types of visas for applicants who hold PA-issued passports.
The US sanctions against the Palestinian groups come days after the world’s biggest academic association of genocide scholars passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel called the announcement disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.”
Israel launched its campaign in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back into Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 64,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 460. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.