Prominent Palestinian activist slams US sanctions as ‘madness’

A prominent Europe-based Palestinian activist has slammed the United States for issuing sanctions against him, dismissing the measure as an attempt to discourage him “from continuing my work for Palestine and advocating for my people’s rights”.

Majed al-Zeer, a dual British and Jordanian national, also rejected the accusations cited in the sanctions as “absolutely false”.

“It is madness,” he told Al Jazeera on Thursday. “It affects my life socially, my career, for the sake of accusation. There is no proof whatsoever.”

Al-Zeer explained that he learned about the sanctions earlier this week through media reports. On Monday, the US Department of the Treasury identified al-Zeer as one of three individuals sanctioned for alleged ties to the Palestinian group Hamas, which it called a “terrorist” organisation.

The Treasury accused al-Zeer, who lives in the UK and Germany, of being a “senior Hamas representative” who played “a central role in the terrorist group’s European fundraising”.

But al-Zeer, the chairman of the European-Palestinian Council for Political Relations, refuted that accusation in a press release on Thursday.

Speaking to Al Jazeera afterwards, he explained he never engaged in any financial activities during his years of activism in Europe, including when he served as president of the Palestinian Return Centre, a UK-based advocacy group.

“Israel just doesn’t want any activists to work for the sake of Palestine. That’s the whole story,” he said.

A reflection of US-Israel relations?

For al-Zeer, the US’s decision is a reflection of its “broader alignment” with Israel.

The US has been a steadfast ally of Israel ever since the country was founded in 1948. That support has continued despite Israel’s current war in Gaza, which has prompted concerns about civilian casualties and human rights abuses.

“I am deeply perplexed by the approach taken to reach and announce this decision by a country that supposedly prides itself on legal integrity,” al-Zeer said in his press release.

The sanctions were announced on October 7, the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, which killed an estimated 1,139 people.

Israel’s response in Gaza, meanwhile, has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians in the year since.

“As we mark one year since Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, [the] Treasury will continue relentlessly degrading the ability of Hamas and other destabilising Iranian proxies to finance their operations and carry out additional violent acts,” Treasury Secretary Janet L Yellen said in a statement.

Al-Zeer was sanctioned along with three other individuals and nine businesses that the US Treasury claimed “play critical roles in external fundraising for Hamas, often under the guise of charitable work”.

The two other designated individuals are based in Italy and Austria, where they are involved with Palestinian advocacy groups. The Treasury Department also designated a former Yemeni politician living in Turkey and his businesses.

‘Laughable’ evidence

The sanctions effectively freeze the four men’s assets in the US and prevents people in the US from doing business with them.

“The Treasury Department will use all available tools at our disposal to hold Hamas and its enablers accountable, including those who seek to exploit the situation to secure additional sources of revenue,” Yellen said.

The US has announced several rounds of sanctions targeting financial support for Hamas. It has also sanctioned a handful of Israeli settlers and groups supporting illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Monday’s sanctions were not the first time al-Zeer was accused of being a Hamas operative. In 2019, he won a legal case after World-Check, an influential customer-screening database used by banks, categorised him as linked to “terrorism”.

Al-Zeer said the US sanctions cited a photograph that showed him with the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whom Israel assassinated in Iran earlier this year.

But he argued the photograph was taken as part of a larger delegations with several European representatives, including British Labour leader Sir Gerald Kaufman. “It is almost laughable,” he said of the evidence.

He pledged to combat the accusations. “I have already begun, with the support of a legal team, the necessary legal procedures to challenge these baseless allegations and defend my rights.”