US imposes sanctions on Palestinians who asked for Israel war crimes probe

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 to the US Treasury Department’s website on Thursday.

The three groups - Gaza-based Palestinian Centre 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 groups asked the ICC in November 2023 to investigate Israeli air strikes on densely populated civilian areas of Gaza, the siege of the territory and displacement of the population.

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A year later, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, Yoav Gallant, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S., China, Russia and Israel, do not recognise its authority.

The U.S. 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 Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Israel called the announcement disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’ campaign of lies”.

Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in control of the territory, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages back into Gaza.

Since then, Israel’s military action has killed 63,000 people, forced nearly all Gaza’s residents to flee their homes at least once, and set off a starvation crisis in parts of the enclave that a global hunger monitor describes as a famine.