LONDON (Middle East Eye) – British aid charities working in Gaza have been told they must provide details about their operations and finances in Palestinian territory to the UK government’s office responsible for enforcing financial sanctions.
In a letter, the Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) asked charities for information including payments to local authorities and for utilities and services purchased in Gaza since December 2020.
The letter is described as a “formal request” for information required by OFSI to monitor compliance with sanctions regulations.
Middle East Eye is aware of at least nine charities that have received copies of the letter in the past week. They include a number of Muslim charities as well as members of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 15 leading aid charities.
The letter asks the charities to confirm if they operate in Gaza and to provide “details of any payments such as local authority charges, taxes, utilities, and services including water supply, waste services [and] telephone or broadband payments”.
Sources at some charities which received the letter said they were consulting their lawyers. Others expressed annoyance that the letter had been sent out at the beginning of Ramadan.
“They have contacted Muslim charities in the first two days of Ramadan with a response deadline of one month. This is absurd. They know this,” said one charity official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A source working for a major charity said OFSI’s request was “a big ask for any finance department in quite a short space of time, especially over Easter and Ramadan”.
Tom Keatinge, director of the Center for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute, told MEE that the letter raised questions about why OFSI was seeking the information requested, and how its disclosure would support compliance.
“The fact that the letter includes the threat of an offence seems unnecessarily heavy-handed.”
More than 500 British charities are listed as working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories on the Charity Commission register.
But far fewer work in Gaza because of the challenges of operating in the territory ever since it was blockaded by the Zionist regime in 2007.
About 1.3 million people, or 58 percent of the population of Gaza, require humanitarian assistance according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
A report on the Muslim humanitarian charity sector in the UK published by the Ayaan Institute think tank last month estimated there were 61 projects in Gaza run by British-based Muslim charities between 2017 and 2021.