Palestinian NGOs sanctioned by US decry move a 'heinous act' amid genocide

The Trump administration on Thursday sanctioned three prominent Palestinian human rights organisations operating in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The sanctions targeted Al-Haq, the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The US tied the sanctions to the organisations for asking the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel over its genocide in Gaza.

The sanctions will freeze any assets the organisations or people working in them have in the US, and also bar them from transacting in US dollars. In addition, the sanctions could have a secondary impact by discouraging non-US entities from engaging with them.

In a joint statement issued shortly after the announcement, the organisations condemned the sanctions “in the strongest terms”, saying, “These measures in times of live genocide against our People, is a coward, immoral, illegal and undemocratic act.”

"As the world moves to impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel, its ally, the US, is working to destroy Palestinian institutions working tirelessly for accountability for the victims of Israel's mass atrocity crimes,” the organisation said.

“Only states with complete disregard to international law & our shared humanity can take such heinous measures against human rights [organisations] working to end a genocide,” the statement added.

Al-Haq was founded in 1979 and operates in the occupied West Bank. It is one of the oldest Palestinian human rights organisations, and by sanctioning it, the Trump administration has handed Israel a victory.

Israel has long tried to silence the group. It labelled Al-Haq a “terrorist organization” in October 2021, and the following year, attacked its offices in Ramallah. Soldiers destroyed office equipment and closed the offices.

Israel then sent intelligence "dossiers" to Europe and the US, claiming that Al-Haq had ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular, leftist political party with a paramilitary branch.

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In a New York Times opinion article published after the raid, Shawan Jabarin, the general director of Al-Haq, said he was “briefly involved in student activities” with the PFLP in the 1980s, then endured decades of Israeli harassment, including eight cumulative years of imprisonment without trial.

Israel never presented evidence to Al-Haq to support its claim that it was tied to the PFLP. 

In August 2022, The Guardian reported that the CIA said in a classified report that it was unable to find any evidence to support Israel’s decision to label Al-Haq and six other Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist organizations”.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza erupted after the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al-Mezan Center have found themselves directly in the line of Israel’s assault, which human rights experts, global leaders and historians have labelled a genocide.

Both organisations are involved in documenting Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.

In August, the Al Mezan Center documented the case of at least three Palestinians abducted and forcibly disappeared by the Israeli army as they were trying to receive aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a widely discredited aid organisation.

Also in August, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights released a 204-page report titled, Voices of the Genocide, which concluded that Israel has committed four of the five acts prohibited under the 1948 Genocide Convention, with the intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group.