Ramallah — The United States has imposed sanctions on three leading Palestinian human rights organizations that petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged Israeli ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, escalating a long-running clash over the court’s reach and Washington’s deference to its ally.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control listed Al-Haq in Ramallah, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, designating them under a program tied to ICC-related actions. The designations effectively bar the groups from receiving funds, goods, or services from the United States and chill many transactions routed through dollar-based banks.
Regulators simultaneously issued a narrowly tailored wind-down authorization, General License 10, allowing certain activities “ordinarily incident and necessary” to exit dealings with the organizations through October 4, 2025, provided payments land in blocked accounts. That carve-out underscores how quickly the designations bite and how broadly financial institutions are expected to comply.
Leaders of the targeted groups said the move will not deter cooperation with The Hague. Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights called the step “shameful” and vowed to continue engaging with ICC investigators. The organizations say their filings compile evidence on civilian deaths, strikes on protected sites, starvation tactics, and forced displacement during Israel’s campaign.
The Trump administration’s action arrives amid mounting legal scrutiny of the Gaza war. In recent months, ICC judges approved arrest warrants for Israeli leaders and a Hamas figure for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, a landmark assertion of jurisdiction that Israel and the United States reject. Washington is not a party to the Rome Statute and has a history of pressuring the court, but applying sanctions to petitioners marks a notable expansion of that posture.
In parallel, the world’s largest association of genocide scholars voted that Israel’s conduct of genocide of Palestinians in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, intensifying political and diplomatic pressure even as fighting grinds on. The association’s leadership stated that 86 percent of participating members supported the resolution. While Israel denounced the finding, the vote has reverberated across European and Global South capitals and injected new urgency into accountability debates.
Humanitarian metrics remain stark. Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel in Gaza, Israel has brutally killed more than 64,000 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza war, with widespread displacement and acute food insecurity documented across the enclave. Those numbers, contested by Israel, nevertheless frame the legal questions the ICC is weighing and the evidentiary files Palestinian groups continue to assemble.
Sanctions mechanics will amplify the squeeze beyond US jurisdiction. Correspondent banks often over-comply, shutting off channels for payroll, rent, cloud services, and cross-border project grants. Partners in Europe and the Middle East may suspend joint work to avoid secondary risk, even when their own governments do not mirror the designations. Lawyers warn that such collateral impacts can erase years of archiving and case-building at the moment when preservation is most critical.
Advocacy networks condemned the listings as an assault on civil society and the right to seek remedies under international law. They argue Washington is punishing fact-finding rather than rebutting facts, a contradiction likely to deepen perceptions of double standards in the Global South and complicate US efforts to rally support on other human rights dossiers.
US officials maintain that the ICC lacks authority over nationals of states that have not joined the court, and that third-party efforts to prosecute Israeli leaders undermine diplomacy. Legal scholars counter that the ICC’s jurisdiction attaches to crimes committed on the territory of a member state and that Palestine’s accession in 2015, along with referrals and evidence submitted by victims’ representatives, grants the court authority to proceed. The practical test will be whether witnesses can be secured and documentation preserved if principal Palestinian interlocutors are financially isolated.
According to Reuters, the Treasury’s notice named Al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Al Mezan; framed the listings as ICC-related; and set them against the backdrop of the court’s warrants for Israeli leaders and the steep civilian toll in Gaza.
