The UK government files don’t tell the whole Interpal story

I was interested to read Amer Sultan’s article about the Tony Blair government standing up against Israeli pressure to ban the Palestinians Relief and Development Fund, the British charity known as Interpal. The UK government files don’t tell the whole Interpal story, of course, but while the charity’s efforts had support from MPs, civil servants and even junior ministers, the government prevaricated and refused to take up the challenge of defending what was, after all, a legally-registered charity.

As a trustee of the charity from 1996, and chair from 1997 until I retired in 2020, I lived through the period described by Sultan, the defining moment of which was arguably the US Treasury’s decision in 2003 to list Interpal as a “specially designated global terrorist entity”.

We had to read about this online, because nobody in the US administration bothered to let us know that the then President George W Bush was “freezing the assets” of a number of individuals and organisations “alleged to have provided support to Hamas”. Note the use of the word “alleged”. There was no due process involved. Israel had no need to prove its allegation; it just supplied a list of people and organisations that it wanted to be designated, and Bush duly obliged. The first that I knew of it was when I read the BBC website on 22 August 2003. Amongst the names listed I saw “The Palestinians Relief and Development Fund, or Interpal, based in Britain”. 

To say that I was shocked is an understatement. From that day to this, despite the serious nature of the allegation — and the extremely debilitating effect on Interpal’s ability to operate with normal banking facilities, essential for any charity — neither the US authorities nor the Israelis have ever provided a shred of credible evidence to back up the allegation. The charity’s supporters in the Muslim community dismissed the “terrorism” charge, and one non-Muslim sent an email saying, “If George Bush has put you on the terrorist list, you must be a force for good, so I am sending you a donation.” And he did. We also received two very large donations from an anonymous Jewish donor. Fearing money laundering allegations, we referred the bank transfers to the Charity Commission and the security authorities, who gave the go ahead to accept them.

Almost from its registration as a charity, right-wing media published allegations against Interpal. On one occasion we were accused of funding Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, to the tune of $100 million, while another article claimed that we had stolen $100 million from Hamas. This was at a time when Interpal’s average annual income of charitable donations was around £3m, all of which was accounted for down to the last penny. The absurdity of this was lost on such media.

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The US designation, however, was serious enough to trigger an investigation by the UK Charity Commission, which found no evidence of any illegal activity by Interpal. The trustees welcomed all of the commission’s inquiries and investigations over the years because, as a result, we believed that we were a much stronger organisation with robust policies and procedures in place to ensure that none of our funding went astray.

That was not enough for the US Treasury to remove Interpal from the terrorist list, though. When the Treasury asked to meet me, our US lawyer asked for guarantees that I would not be subpoenaed or detained upon landing in America. “Our lawyers have a problem with that,” said the Treasury. We offered to pay for US officials to come to the UK to go through our files dating back to 1994. “We don’t do that,” they said.

Then, off the record, the Treasury told us via our lawyer in New York that the decision to place Interpal on the list in the first place came from the US State Department. “It was entirely a political decision, which will require another political decision to reverse it.” That was never going to happen.

Interpal thus laboured under the “terrorist entity” label for years, during which time it went from strength to strength as a one-issue charity helping Palestinians in desperate need. As the charity’s chair, I was privileged to travel the world — the US and Canada (pre-designation; the Canadian government wanted Brownie points with Bush, so also put Interpal on its “terrorist” list, as did the Australians, ruling out any visits by trustees), Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand — representing Interpal; I met royalty and ministers, and wrote and spoke on the Palestine issue widely at home and abroad. If there was any substance at all to the US-Israeli allegations, would that have been possible? As one senior Metropolitan Police Special Branch officer commented, “The absence of any police involvement [in Interpal’s case] is hugely significant.”

Our small charity benefited from the support of many people in prominent positions in their respective fields; from politicians and surgeons to media personalities and activists, Interpal had some wonderful friends. They understood the incredible difference that our efforts made to ordinary Palestinians in the refugee camps of occupied Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. For political reasons, we had to avoid the camps in Syria.

Interpal was caught up in an extremely politicised situation, both in the field and with regards to our status, and yet as a charitable organisation we were prohibited from having too much involvement in politics. A lot of our time and resources was spent on refuting terrorism allegations, which the right-wing media regurgitated from time to time, diverting us from the task in hand of helping Palestinians.

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From the charity’s early days in the optimistic light of the now discredited Oslo Accords, through allegations of wrongdoing, to growing support across a broad section of society, Interpal saw its humanitarian aid make a real difference to the lives of Palestinians in its main areas of operation. We also witnessed small development projects grow into pillars of many refugee and other destitute communities; schools, clinics, employment programmes and universities funded by Interpal became indispensable to their users. In Gaza, of course, many of those projects have been destroyed by the occupation state in its genocidal frenzy of violence. Indeed, Interpal’s Gaza field office was one of the first targets for Israeli bombs post-7 October 2023.

Where once Interpal was just one of a handful of international NGOs in the field, there were soon many more. It was not unusual to visit a project funded by the charity and find plaques and certificates acknowledging support from other well-known NGOs, including US Aid; yes, the US government funded many of the same projects as Interpal and yet it still judged our charity to be a “terrorist entity”, such was the absurd situation in which we found ourselves. We developed a very close working relationship with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and attended a number of the agency’s “hosts’ and donors’” meetings alongside state actors, including the US, although the American delegation walked out when I was given an opportunity to speak during one session.

In our fund-raising and distribution, though, we put politics to one side. Interpal’s trustees and staff always worked hard to ensure that the apolitical charitable aims of the organisation were fulfilled, and that as much help as possible was given to our beneficiaries. Politicians come and go, but the needs of the Palestinians got worse every day, often due to the inaction of the former who could improve the living conditions of the latter but choose not to, for all sorts of reasons. Now we see international complicity in the genocide, in which more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. The list of Israeli war crimes gets longer on a daily basis.

Much has been said and written about Interpal and its trustees; some of it accurate; much of it not. We published our story in 2019 under the title Faith, Hope and Charity. The purpose was to give readers the opportunity to make their own minds up about the veracity, or otherwise, of the Israeli-US allegations. 

We also hoped that readers would get an insight into the sort of work that Interpal’s staff in the field carried out on a daily basis, as the charity strived to bring a degree of normality into the lives of Palestinians who exist in anything but normal conditions. That the charity thrived despite the US designation was a testament to the dedication of Interpal’s staff and supporters and the patent falsehood of the allegations against it. I was proud to be able to point out that George W Bush was an ex-president, whereas I was still the chair of Interpal, the charity he tried to kill off to please his Zionist paymasters.

I look forward to the day when NGOs like Interpal are no longer needed because the Palestinians are living and thriving in their own land in freedom. For now, however, there is an even greater need than ever before for humanitarian aid to get through to beleaguered Palestinians in their Israeli-occupied land.

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