The US 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.
The three groups – the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, and the Ramallah-based Al Haq – were listed under what the Treasury Department said were ICC-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.
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.
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 recognise its authority.
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' campaign of lies".
Israel launched its assault on the Palestinian enclave in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages back into Gaza.
Since then, Israel's military campaign has killed more than 64,000 people, forced nearly all of Gaza's residents to flee their homes at least once, and set off a starvation crisis in parts of the territory that a global hunger monitor describes as a famine.
