Human rights groups based in the West Bank have long documented Israel’s crimes — and that’s why they’re now subject to US sanctions. The US government is trying to make their work impossible in order to protect Israel from scrutiny.

At Al-Haq’s offices in Ramallah, this work takes the form of an archive built up across a decades-long Israeli occupation. When we tried to get there from Bethlehem in July 2025, we got stuck in a long line at the checkpoint. An hour before our appointment, we still didn’t know if we’d make it. Every trip is subject to Israeli soldiers’ discretion. “We’ll get to Ramallah, inshallah,” says our guide.

“One of the things that motivates me to wake up every morning is that Israel seems to be running scared of our investigations,” says Mariam (who has been given a pseudonym), a researcher at Al-Haq. That fear, she explains, translates into pressure on funders and threats against banks. “They try to scare every single donor.”

When an archive can refute the military’s version of events and contribute to international legal proceedings, it becomes a political threat. This is the evidence-gathering capacity that the sanctions now target.

Since most international transactions are conducted in US dollars and through US-based platforms, many banks, donors, and partners in other countries severed ties despite not legally being required to do so. The report Criminalising Accountability refers to this as a mechanism of over-compliance. In less than a month, these organizations lost between 20 and 60 percent of their revenue, and YouTube removed over seven hundred videos, including witness accounts of torture and images of demolitions.

For Al-Haq, this has meant staff left unpaid and US collaborators forced to resign. For Al Mezan, the sanctions compound the devastation in Gaza, affecting staff who’ve been displaced and the fate of researchers who must document events while also trying to protect their families, on top of their offices being hit. “We have no funds; we’ve had to cut salaries, and this has a direct impact on our ability to document crimes in Gaza,” says Younis.