The move prevents those targeted from receiving visas to travel to the United States, the US State Department said, although it did not list any specific individuals.
“It is in our national security interests to impose consequences and hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments and undermining the prospects for peace,” the department said in a statement.
The State Department said the two Palestinian groups had “taken actions to internationalize its conflict with Israel,” including through the International Criminal Court, and said both had continued “to support terrorism.”
Representatives for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization could not immediately be reached for comment.
The sanctions come as US special envoy Steve Witkoff was expected to arrive in Israel on Thursday in a bid to save Gaza ceasefire talks and tackle a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel faces growing world pressure over the war in Gaza, and several Western powers have said they will recognize a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has warned about the consequences of imposing Israeli settler control over the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron city, south of the occupied West Bank, on Wednesday.
The ministry said that Israel’s decision to transfer the management of the mosque, known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, to a settlement council is “an unprecedented move to impose control over it, Judaize it, alter its identity, and a blatant violation of international law and UN resolutions.”
Israeli media reported on Wednesday that the Israeli Civil Administration, which operates under the Ministry of Defense and governs the West Bank, has transferred the management and supervision of the Ibrahimi Mosque from the Hebron municipality to the religious council of the Kiryat Arba settlement.
The ministry called on UNESCO, which had designated the Ibrahimi Mosque as a World Heritage site in 2017, to urgently intervene and halt the implementation of this plan.
Tayseer Abu Sneineh, mayor of Hebron, stressed that “the transfer of the powers of the Ibrahimi Mosque administration (to the settlement’s religious council) is an assault on the civilization of the city and a blatant violation of international law.”
Abu Sneineh said that the Israeli Civil Administration, officially known as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, has not yet officially handed over the decision to the city’s municipality.
He said that Israeli violations of the Ibrahimi Mosque’s sanctity began shortly after the city and West Bank were occupied in 1967, when settlers held a collective wedding at the site.
“We reject the decision in full, and consider it a political, cultural and religious aggression against the city of Hebron,” Abu Sneineh told Wafa news agency.
Sheikh Moataz Abu Sneineh, director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, said they have not received official notification about the transfer of administration powers, emphasizing that the mosque is a purely Islamic site and part of Islamic endowment property.
The Ibrahimi Mosque is in Hebron’s Old City, where about 400 settlers are protected by around 1,500 Israeli soldiers and surrounded by numerous military checkpoints.
Since 1994, Israel has spatially divided the Ibrahimi Mosque into 63 percent for Jews and 37 percent for Muslims, after a massacre by an extremist settler that killed 29 Palestinian worshipers at the site.