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The Trump administration is expanding its campaign against the International Criminal Court with new sanctions on three Palestinian human rights groups that have asked the ICC to investigate Israel over allegations of genocide in Gaza.
Analysts say the designations by Secretary of State Marco Rubio could impede the court's efforts to gather evidence of Israel's conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The designations Thursday prohibit U.S. entities from doing business with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Al Haq. Third-party groups such as banks or website providers have been given one month to wind down business transactions with the organizations, according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
"These entities have directly engaged in efforts by the [ICC] to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel's consent," Rubio said in a statement. "We oppose the ICC's politicized agenda, overreach, and disregard for the sovereignty of the United States and that of our allies."
The ICC in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. (It has also issued warrants for three Hamas commanders; all have been killed by Israeli forces.) Neither Israel nor the United States recognize the court's jurisdiction.
Legal scholars warned that the sanctions threatened international norms and could undermine U.S. standing as a defender of human rights.
"Sanctions are designed to hold criminal perpetrators accountable, or punish those who act against U.S. foreign policy and national security interests," said Mohsen Farshneshani, a principal attorney at the Washington-based Sanctions Law Center. "They're not meant to muzzle those who are documenting human rights atrocities."
The designations were issued under emergency powers invoked by President Donald Trump in February, when he accused the ICC of "illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel." He said any effort to investigate or prosecute "protected persons," including Israeli officials, posed an "extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security.
Trump has also invoked emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports, deport immigrants and dispatch the National Guard to U.S. cities, among other actions. The invocation can enable a president to temporarily circumvent congressional scrutiny.
The administration has also imposed sanctions on the ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, his two deputies and six judges, and on Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Albanese has called Israel's campaign in Gaza a genocide.
Hamas and other fighters streamed out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people, Israeli authorities say, and took 251 more back to the enclave as hostages. Israel responded with a full-scale war to eliminate Hamas in Gaza.
Israel since then has flattened much of Gaza, displaced virtually the entire population and killed more than 64,000 people, the health ministry there says. The majority are believed to be civilians; the ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
An ICC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new designations.
"This is how we apply sanctions to warlords and drug traffickers," said a former U.S. sanctions official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment on the sensitive matter. "You want to hit the broader network so that it's harder for the core of the network to do business. In this case, the core is the ICC."
"Sanctions are analogous to a punch in the face," attorney Brad Brooks-Rubin wrote in New Lines Magazine last month. "Sometimes one punch is all that's needed to get someone to change their tune and go in a different direction. But usually it takes more than that." (Brooks-Rubin did not address the Trump administration's campaign against the ICC in the piece.)
Without rights groups to help document war crimes, analysts say, ICC investigators could struggle to meet the evidentiary threshold to prosecute suspects.
Brad Parker, an attorney for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, described last week's designations as "a cynical attempt to punish advocates leading the charge for accountability at the height of Israel's U.S.-backed genocide against the Palestinian people."
Now, Parker said, the Palestinian-led groups will likely struggle to pay staff or raise money, and employees could risk civil and criminal penalties. "Everything will potentially grind to a halt," he said. "It's a vengeful attack intended to create an existential problem."
Analysts warned that U.S. sanctions could chill the entire human rights sector, dissuading groups from working with Palestinian organizations or the court.
"It's a chain reaction," said Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, an attorney and lecturer at American University. "Once an organization is a specially designated entity than providing any support - material, technical or financial - becomes an offense subject to a large financial penalty or the revocation of U.S. nonprofit status."
Israel's Ministry of Defense imposed sanctions on six Palestinian organizations in October 2021. All of them were engaged in work with the ICC. Omer-Man said that Israeli officials asked the United States and several European nations to add the organizations to their own national sanctions lists at that time, but the campaign was unsuccessful.
"I would not be surprised if [the new designations were] on Netanyahu's wish list," Omer-Man said. "I can't see it any other way."
During Trump's first term, he froze the assets of and imposed travel bans on several ICC officials involved in investigating alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and the occupied territories.
"As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy and no authority," Trump told the U.N. General Assembly in 2018. The sanctions were overturned by the Biden administration.
The Palestine Institute for Public Policy has called upon the European Union to immediately invoke the Blocking Statute, a late-90s policy designed to counter U.S. sanctions and relieve European parties from enforcement.
A spokesperson for Al-Haq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the risks associated with the latest designations, called the implications of the designations "catastrophic."
"These measures go beyond Palestine," they wrote in a WhatsApp message. "By protecting Israel from accountability, they are dismantling the international legal order and undermining the possibility of justice for victims of grave crimes everywhere."