Is it legal to donate to a family in Gaza?

The short answer

If you are an ordinary person in a Western country and you want to send money to a civilian family in Gaza, you are allowed to do it. No licence, no permission, no special paperwork.

That surprises people, because the word sanctions makes everyone picture a wall around a territory. It is worth understanding why the picture is wrong, because once you see it, the whole question becomes simple, and so does the one thing you actually need to check.

The mistake almost everyone makes

People imagine sanctions work by place. Money that crosses into a sanctioned area gets stopped, and the sender gets into trouble.

That is how a small number of sanctions programmes work. It is not how this one works. The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control put it in a single line in its guidance of 14 November 2023: Gaza and the West Bank are not embargoed or under jurisdictional sanctions by OFAC. The same is true in the United Kingdom and in the European Union. There is no wall.

What exists instead are lists. Long lists of named individuals, companies and organisations that you must not transact with, wherever in the world they happen to be. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are on them. So are thousands of arms dealers, oligarchs, cartel figures and shell companies with no connection to Palestine at all.

The legal question was never "is Gaza allowed". It is "who is receiving this money".

That single shift is the whole article. Once the question is about a person rather than a place, the way to stay on the right side of it becomes obvious: know who you are giving to.

The three lists, by the numbers

Here is the actual size of the thing you are being asked to avoid. These are live counts, pulled on 20 September 2026.

Search those lists for a territory and you find nothing, because they do not contain territories. They contain people. Twenty thousand of them in the American case, and not one is an ordinary civilian family receiving grocery money.

What American sanctions enforcement actually punished in 2025

This is the part that settles the question, and almost nobody looks it up. OFAC publishes every civil enforcement action it takes, with the party and the penalty. Here is the complete list for 2025.

Read the list again. Venture capital, brokerages, crypto platforms, chemical and electronics manufacturers, freight, logistics, real estate, and one lawyer who ran a sanctioned Russian oligarch's family trust.

Every single action concerns commercial dealings with sanctioned parties. Not one concerns a person who sent money to a civilian family. If donating to a family in Gaza carried the risk people imagine, the evidence would be here. It is a public list. You can read all fourteen settlement notices yourself.

What the United States says

On 14 November 2023 OFAC issued a compliance communiqué titled Guidance for the Provision of Humanitarian Assistance to the Palestinian People. It says two things that matter to you.

First, that Gaza and the West Bank are not embargoed or under jurisdiction-based sanctions. Second, that US sanctions do not prohibit legitimate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.

What remains prohibited is transacting with blocked parties: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and anyone else designated under the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations or the Foreign Terrorist Organization Sanctions Regulations. That is a list of names, and it is the same list of 20,348 targets in the table above.

What the United Kingdom says

The United Kingdom has no embargo on Gaza either. British sanctions work by designation under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, and the prohibition is on dealing with the funds of a designated person.

There is a Gaza humanitarian general licence, INT/2023/3749168. It is worth being precise about it, because it is often described loosely. That licence exists so that United Nations agencies, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Disasters Emergency Committee and NGOs in UN response plans can operate even where a designated person is unavoidably involved. It does not cover an individual donor, and an individual donor does not need it. If your recipient is not designated, no prohibition applies, so no licence is required.

What the European Union says

The EU created a dedicated Hamas and PIJ sanctions framework on 19 January 2024, under Council Regulation 2024/386. It works the same way: named individuals and entities, asset freezes, and a prohibition on making funds available to them.

In February 2024 the Council added a humanitarian exception to its counter-terrorism asset freezes, so that recognised humanitarian actors can work without prior authorisation. That exception now runs to 22 February 2027. Again, it is aimed at organisations operating near designated parties. An ordinary gift to a civilian who is not listed never needed it.

What this means when you give to a family

Because the rule is a list of names, everything comes down to one thing: do you know whose name is on the other end?

This is the part I find slightly satisfying, because the checks that keep you legal are exactly the checks that keep you from being scammed. They are the same checks.

This is why a verified fundraiser is the clean answer. Not because a platform makes it legal, it was already legal. Because a platform that checks identity does the one piece of work the law actually cares about, and shows you the result.

Legal and tax deductible are two different questions

These get mixed up constantly, so to be clear about our own situation: giving to my family is legal, and it is not tax deductible. We are a family, not a registered charity, so there is no deduction and no receipt for your tax return.

If the deduction matters to you, give to a registered charity instead, and that is a completely reasonable choice. If what matters is that the money reaches one household this week without an organisation in between, give directly. We wrote about that distinction in detail in is my Gaza donation tax deductible.

The bottom line

There is no wall around Gaza in any Western sanctions regime. There are lists of 20,348, 6,284 and 6,128 named targets, and the entire legal obligation on you is to not be sending money to one of them. In a full year of American enforcement, across fourteen actions and $265,746,819 in penalties, not a single case concerned a donation to a civilian.

The honest caveats, because I would rather you hear them from me. A bank or a card issuer can decline any payment for its own commercial reasons, and that is not a legal finding about you. And this page is written by an agricultural engineer in Northern Gaza, not a lawyer, so it is information rather than legal advice. Every claim on it links to the primary document so you can check it yourself.

But the thing that stops most people from giving turns out not to be true. You are allowed.

Questions people ask

Is it illegal to send money to Gaza?

No. Gaza is not an embargoed territory under United States, United Kingdom or European Union sanctions. The US Treasury states directly that Gaza and the West Bank are not under jurisdiction-based sanctions. What is prohibited is transacting with designated persons and entities, which is a list of names rather than a place.

Do I need a licence or permission to donate to a Gaza family?

No. Humanitarian general licences, such as the UK's INT/2023/3749168, exist for UN agencies and NGOs that may have to deal with designated parties in the course of their work. An individual giving to a civilian who is not designated does not need a licence, because no prohibition applies in the first place.

Has anyone been prosecuted for donating to a family in Gaza?

OFAC publishes every civil enforcement action it takes. In 2025 there were 14, totalling $265,746,819. They involved a venture capital firm, brokerages, crypto platforms, manufacturers, freight and logistics companies, a real estate firm and a lawyer who acted as trustee for a sanctioned oligarch. None concerned a humanitarian donation to a civilian.

How do I know the family is not on a sanctions list?

Give through a fundraiser that verifies identity, so a full legal name exists and an independent party has already checked it. Sanctions lists are public and searchable, and payment platforms screen against them as a matter of routine. An anonymous account with no name attached is the situation to avoid, for legal reasons and for fraud reasons alike.

Could my bank block the payment even if it is legal?

It can. Banks and card issuers decline transactions for their own commercial risk reasons, and some are cautious about anything involving the region. That is a business decision by a private company, not a legal finding about you. Giving through an established fundraising platform usually avoids it, because the platform is the merchant of record.

Is a donation to a Gaza family tax deductible?

No. A gift to an individual or a family is not tax deductible in the United States, the United Kingdom or the European Union, because deductibility requires a registered charity. Legal and tax deductible are separate questions. Our fundraiser is legal to give to and carries no deduction.

Is giving directly to a family better than giving to a charity?

They do different jobs. A charity can run hospitals and water systems at a scale no family can. A direct gift reaches one household within days with no overhead in between, and you can see exactly who received it. Many people do both. The legal position is the same either way.

Sources and method

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