According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Palestinians seeking international justice for Israeli human rights abuses mustn’t go unpunished. The State Department on Thursday announced sanctions on three top Palestinian rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for war crimes, including genocide.
Al Haq, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights—which all document human rights abuses in occupied Palestine—drew America’s ire for having “directly engaged” in ICC efforts “to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
In November 2023, the three groups called the tribunal’s attention to various Israeli abuses in Gaza, including strikes on its civilian areas, forced displacement of its population, the use of toxic gas, and the denial of necessities like food and water.
“These actions amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and incitement to genocide,” the groups wrote in a press release at the time. They encouraged the issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
A year later, the ICC issued warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” (The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for a former Hamas commander.)
On Friday, the three groups issued a joint statement condemning the U.S. sanctions.
“Threatened by the impact and role of our advocacy, legal research, and documentation in exposing Israel’s ongoing international crimes, the United States has resorted to punishing individuals and organisations seeking to uphold the legal system upon which the international community was founded,” the statement says. “The implications go beyond Palestine: by protecting Israel from accountability, they are dismantling the international legal order and undermining the possibility of justice for victims of grave crimes anywhere.”
The Trump administration in February imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, and last month slapped ICC officials with sanctions, giving the same rationale then as this week.
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