Solidarity with Mohammed Khatib and Jaldia Abubakra: Resisting imperialist sanctions
Statement: https://samidoun.net/2026/05/solidarity-with-mohammed-khatib-and-jaldia-abubakra-resisting-imperialist-sanctions/
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.
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.”
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.