Israel bans 37 aid groups from entering Gaza

Israel will revoke the licenses of 37 aid organizations working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, saying they failed to meet the requirements of new registration rules.

Prominent international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) including ActionAid, the International Rescue Committee and the Norwegian Refugee Council will suspend their licenses on January 1 and end their operations within 60 days.

Israel said the organizations, among other things, failed to hand over “complete” personal information about their employees.

The move was severely criticized by the foreign ministers of 10 countries including the United Kingdom, who said the new regulations were “restrictive” and “unacceptable.”

The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland said in a joint statement that the forced closure of INGO operations would have “serious consequences for access to essential services, including health care.”

They added that the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “catastrophic” and called on the Israeli government to ensure that international NGOs can operate “in a sustained and predictable manner.”

Israel’s Expatriate Affairs Ministry, which is responsible for registration applications, said the new measures would not affect humanitarian aid to Gaza.

It added that aid continues to be provided through “approved and vetted channels” including UN agencies, bilateral partners and humanitarian organizations.

The report said the main reason aid organizations had their licenses revoked was “refusal to provide complete and verifiable information about their staff,” which is crucial to preventing “terrorist infiltration of humanitarian agencies.”

Earlier this month, UN-backed experts said Nutrition and food supplies improve in Gaza Since Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire in October, 100,000 people have experienced “catastrophic conditions” in the following month.

Cogat, the Israeli military agency that controls Gaza crossings, said the group to be suspended “has not provided assistance to Gaza during the current ceasefire.”

“Even in the past, their total contributions amounted to only about 1% of total aid,” it added.

The Ministry of Expatriates Affairs said that less than 15% of organizations providing humanitarian aid to Gaza were found to have breached the new regulatory framework.

The framework includes multiple grounds for rejection, including:

• Denies the existence of Israel as a Jewish democratic state

• Denies the Holocaust or the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023

• Supporting enemy states or terrorist organizations in their armed struggle against Israel

• Promoting a “delegitimization campaign” against Israel

• Call for a boycott of Israel or commit to an event

• Support prosecution of Israeli security forces in foreign or international courts

Humanitarian Country Team for the Occupied Palestinian Territories – a forum that brings together United Nations agencies and more than 200 local and international organizations – warned before The new registration system “fundamentally jeopardizes” the operations of international NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank.

“The system relies on vague, arbitrary and highly politicized standards and imposes requirements that humanitarian organizations cannot meet without breaching international legal obligations or compromising core humanitarian principles,” the report said.

It added: “While some INGOs have registered under the new system, these INGOs represent only a small part of Gaza’s response and are nowhere near the numbers needed to meet immediate and basic needs.”

According to the Humanitarian Country Team, international NGOs currently operate or support most field hospitals and primary health care centers in Gaza, emergency shelter response, water and sanitation services, nutritional stabilization centers for severely malnourished children, and critical mine action activities.

“The message is clear: humanitarian assistance is welcome, but the use of humanitarian frameworks for terrorist activities is not,” Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs and combating anti-Semitism, said in a statement.

Other organizations suspended include CARE, Medico International and Medical Aid to the Palestinians.