Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network condemns in the strongest terms the latest U.S. sanctions imposed on Palestinian organizers, activists and leaders. Alongside the billions of dollars in bombs and weaponry, these sanctions illustrate the full U.S. partnership in the ongoing imperialist-Zionist genocide agains the Palestinian people. On Tuesday, 19 May, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on our comrades Mohammed Khatib and Jaldia Abubakra, targeting them for their ongoing mobilization and action organizing Palestinians in exile and diaspora, for their role in mobilizing the solidarity movement, and for their defense of Palestinian prisoners in Zionist jails.
The designations of our comrades came alongside sanctions on Saif Abu Keshek — one of the leadership of the Global Sumud Flotilla — and Hisham Abu Mahfouz of the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, Palestinian community leaders and organizers targeted in the same context of the attempted criminalization of Palestinian organizing in the shatat and Palestine solidarity mobilization. The U.S. Treasury Department once again targeted Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid the genocide, sanctioning Marwan Abu Ras and the Palestinian Scholars Association, as well as Palestinians and Egyptians in Egypt, allegedly seeking to break the siege on Gaza.
These are the latest in a series of U.S. sanctions and designations targeting active Palestinians in Europe, North America and internationally, including in occupied Palestine. Samidoun was sanctioned as a “specially designated global terrorist” in October 2024, and the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad was similarly attacked in January 2026. Over just this period, dozens of Palestinian organizations and individuals — including a large number of Palestinians in Europe working to break the siege on Gaza with charitable aid and independent support — have faced U.S. sanctions, as well as charities in Gaza — part of a sustained effort to attack Palestinian community organizations and to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza, hand in hand with U.S. sponsored Zionist bombs and assassinations. Reflecting the dominance of the United States over global banking and financial sectors, people subjected to U.S. sanctions outside the country — who number in the thousands — are deprived of access to banking services and other critical financial needs.
Mohammed Khatib, the European coordinator of Samidoun, targeted in today’s sanctions, is a Palestinian refugee born in Ein el-Helweh camp in Lebanon. He has spoken and written widely on the Palestinian cause, and has been severely targeted for repression due to the power of his expression. The Belgian government is attempting to withdraw his political asylum, while he has been banned from Switzerland, Greece and the Netherlands, because of his voice of support for the resistance and the prisoners, and his role as a leading revolutionary voice of Palestinians in exile and diaspora, as part of the executive committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement.
Jaldia Abubakra, coordinator of Samidoun in Spain and founder of Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Mobilization, is also a member of the executive committee of the Masar Badil. A Palestinian from Gaza, she has widely spoken at hundreds of events and actions across Spain and internationally; she sailed on the Women’s Boat to Gaza as well as the Global Sumud Flotilla in 2025. The far right and Zionists in Spain attempted, and failed, to prosecute her for her statements about Palestinian resistance when she was invited to address the Spanish parliament. Both she and Mohammed Khatib spoke together two weeks ago at the Resistance Festival in Brussels, Belgium.
Like the initial designation of Samidoun, as well as attempts to criminalize our work in Western imperialist countries, this is not only an attack on our organization, our leaders and our comrades, but on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. It is meant to impose fear and terror and weaken the movement to support and liberate the over 9600 Palestinian prisoners in Zionist jails — as well as the Lebanese and Arab prisoners held there, and the Palestinian prisoners and prisoners for Palestine in international jails. This comes particularly as the Zionist regime has adopted two new laws for the execution of Palestinian prisoners, sparking global outrage, and as its systematic policies of torture, sexual assault and rape against imprisoned Palestinians have been increasingly exposed before the world. It is clearly part of the U.S.-Zionist strategy to deprive the Palestinian prisoners of global support and solidarity as they resist a regime of assassination, abuse and torture.
Further, today’s sanctions are a deliberate assault on Palestinians organizing in exile and diaspora to reclaim the role of Palestinian refugees and exiles in the struggle for liberation. Coming only days following the 78th anniversary of the Nakba — the Day of Palestinian Struggle — they target organizations and individuals that are specifically dedicated to renewing Palestinian engagement, mobilization and involvement everywhere in exile and diaspora. Mohammed, Jaldia, Saif and Hisham are all known as leaders of organizations dedicated to reclaiming the rightful place of the Palestinian shatat in the liberation struggle. It is clear that these sanctions are intended to divide Palestinians from the flotilla campaign and the broader solidarity movement, as well as to divide Palestinians across national borders and to impose fear and silence upon the community.
The sanctions today also appear to be fully coordinated with the Zionist regime to intersect with their violent attack against the Freedom Flotilla and the Global Sumud Flotilla, the piracy of dozens of vessels, and the abduction of hundreds of international activists (including numerous Palestinians and Arabs) at sea. Previous flotilla detainees have been subjected to torture and sexual assault and threatened with lengthy arbitrary detention — and the Zionist attack on the flotilla is fundamentally illegal and illegitimate. Targeting activists who have participated in the Flotilla — or who are simply described as having done so — on the same day that the Zionist navy engaged in piracy and abduction on the high seas demonstrates once again that the U.S. is a full partner in the murderous blockade of Palestinians facing genocide in Gaza.
Samidoun strongly condemns the latest attack on the Flotilla and the abduction of hundreds of international activists, as well as the theft of valuable ships and cargo by the Zionist entity. We demand the immediate release of all detainees and the return of their ships and property, which are intended for one purpose — to reach the besieged Palestinian people of Gaza. We urge people around the world to join the demonstrations and calls to action for the release of the imprisoned Flotilla activists, many of whom are directly involved in prisoner solidarity and direct action in their neighborhoods, cities and communities, as well as to escalate international pressure to liberate all of the Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab prisoners held captive in the Zionist torture dungeons.
The sanctions targeting our comrades Jaldia and Mohammed are an example of the terror and tyranny imposed upon states, peoples, organizations and individuals around the world by U.S. imperialism. U.S. economic coercive measures are responsible for attempted genocide from Cuba to the Islamic Republic of Iran; they target all who refuse U.S. control and domination over their resources, lives and futures. In fact, only hours from the issuance of these sanctions targeting Palestinian organizers, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a new series of sanctions against Iran, seeking to carried on their failed aggression by other means, and making clear their efforts to impoverish the Iranian people and destroy their achievements, labeling them “Economic Fury.”
Thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iranians, Cubans, and all who resist U.S. imperialism or who pursue an alternate path of development for their country are designated as terrorists and sanctioned; resistance organizations in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen — and even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — are designated as “terrorist entities” or proscribed. In recent years, these designations have escalated to include grassroots organizations in the imperial core, like Samidoun, the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, or Palestine Action in Britain, which has forced multiple “Israeli” arms factories to shut down. As the popular global rejection of Zionism and imperialism has swelled, the response has been the same internationally — repression, criminalization, sanctions, targeting, isolation and imprisonment.
As we noted at the time of Samidoun’s designation:
“Like the Zionist entity fears the Palestinian resistance, so do the imperialist powers fear the Palestinian diaspora and their supporters that have been rising up again and again, especially since the start of operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the Zionist genocide. They fear a strong, popular movement that threatens their economic and political interests in Palestine and the region.”
Once again, the imperialist powers are making clear that they are more than willing to carry out intense repression, criminalization and imprisonment in order to aid and abet genocide. We urge the movement for Palestine everywhere to rally around all of the targeted individuals and organizations, and to not allow the tactics of state terror and fear to divide us.
Further, it is long past time for all Palestinian, Lebanese and regional resistance organizations — let alone charitable, community, activist and humanitarian initiatives — to be removed from so-called “terrorist lists” — in Italy, in Europe, in the U.S. and around the world. The Palestinian people, and all occupied peoples, have the right to resist their occupation, to defend themselves, to liberate their land, and to organize to achieve those goals.
For the solidarity movement’s work to be meaningful and effective, it must act to support the Palestinian Resistance organizations — and, indeed, to coordinate with them on the broadest possible level. We must redouble our efforts to escalate our resistance and globalize the intifada in the streets of the cities of the world, for the freedom of all of our prisoners in Zionist and imperialist jails, and for the freedom of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Show your solidarity with comrades Jaldia Abubakra and Mohammed Khatib — invite them to speak, share their stories, and demand an end to all of the sanctions on Palestinian organizations and activists.
Join in the protests, actions and mobilizations for the Flotilla, against Zionist piracy, and to free all Palestinian, Lebanese, Arab and international prisoners from Zionist jails, everywhere.
Share the zine, “What to do when you, too, become a terrorist,” developed by Samidoun activists.
The purpose of sanctions and designations is not only to cut off our comrades from payments, work and finances — it is also to divide our movement, to impose fear and terror, and to push activists into imposing U.S. repressive legislation in their own organizations, around the world, beyond its jurisdiction. We must meet sanctions and silencing with loud voices of deepened and escalated resistance, action and mobilization, and truly globalize the intifada — most centrally for the people of Palestine, Lebanon and the resistance of the entire region on the front lines confronting genocide, Zionism and imperialism.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
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