Palestinian Authority freezes funds of Islamic charities

Associated Press, Gaza City

Transcribed from the clipping

“Palestinian authorities said Thursday they froze the bank accounts of nine Islamic charities to investigate whether the organizations funnel money to militants — the Palestinians’ most striking action yet in a U.S.-sought clampdown on armed groups… The Palestinian Monetary Authority issued the order to shut down 39 accounts of the nine charities on Sunday. The move became known Thursday, when hundreds of Palestinians relying on welfare payments from charities tried to pick up their monthly checks at banks in Gaza City. The banks said the accounts were blocked and turned them away.… The airstrike in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis killed Hamdi Kalakh, 23, as he was driving a donkey cart along a residential street… Dore Gold, an Israeli government spokesman, praised the move. ‘There have been charities that Israel has long suspected of being front organizations for Hamas,’ he said.”

Photograph caption

Disabled Palestinian citizens hold signs during a rally organized by Islamic charity associations in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah Thursday to protest the freezing of bank accounts.

Context added by this archive

The story is the freeze. The photograph is who it landed on: men in wheelchairs at the front of a march in Rafah, carrying signs written in English. One of them reads LET US LIVE WITH DIGNITY. It is the first time in this thread that disabled Palestinians appear doing something rather than having something done to them.

Cite this item

"Palestinian Authority freezes funds of Islamic charities," The Herald-Mail, 29 August 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-012. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-012

Elsewhere in the archive

Unfortunately, It Was ParadiseSan Francisco Chronicle · 19 January 2003 · the same year
Israeli forces kill two PalestiniansThe Charlotte Observer · 30 January 2003 · the same year
Some Israelis contemplate low-grade ‘genocide’ for PalestiniansThe Free Lance-Star · 2 February 2003 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2003-012.

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