Israel threatened that 37 aid organisations will be banned from operating in Gaza from January 2026, unless they complied with guidelines requiring detailed information on Palestinian staff, which drew criticism from the UN and EU. [GETTY]
In December 2023, just weeks after a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) evacuation convoy was bombed, killing two people, MSF released a statement substantiating that the Israeli army was responsible for the attack. They affirmed that the convoy was following the route approved in coordination with the Israeli army.
Two days later, Israeli forces attacked the area around the MSF clinic in Gaza City, destroying MSF vehicles with a bulldozer and causing a wall of the clinic to collapse. Then a few more days following this incident, an Israeli tank destroyed an MSF minibus and the cars that had been sent to evacuate MSF staff at the clinic.
Since just October 7, Israel has killed hundreds of aid workers, far surpassing the number killed in other settings of heavy violence, including Sudan, Ukraine, and Somalia.
At least 15 of the aid workers killed were affiliated with MSF. Many were killed while working, and others whilst sheltering at home with their families.
It was then understandable that aid agencies pushed back when in December 2025, Israel announced new policies for humanitarian agencies working in Gaza, including turning over personal identifying information for every employee. This also included information about funding and operations, and adhering to ideological guidelines preventing support for international legal proceedings or boycotts.
Israel announced that 37 humanitarian agencies would thereby no longer be able to operate in Gaza, including MSF and others like the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Mercy Corps.
At the time, 53 international NGOs wrote a statement warning that this step would ‘set a dangerous precedent by extending Israeli authority over humanitarian operations in the occupied Palestinian territory, contrary to the internationally recognized legal framework governing the territory.’ The UN called the move, ‘the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access.’
While some groups like Oxfam rejected the arrangement, MSF released a statement saying they has initially accepted Israel’s terms. They presented their decision as ‘an impossible choice: either we provide this information or abandon the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who need vital medical care.’
It is true that due to Israel’s two year campaign of airstrikes, raids, siege, and displacement, widely recognised as genocide, there are significant medical needs across Gaza, including injuries, maternal and reproductive health, mental health treatment, infectious disease, chronic diseases, and malnutrition.
But the choice to hand over the personal information of their workers added another layer of threat to Palestinians remaining in Gaza, and another layer of Israeli control. As such, the move led to immediate backlash, including by Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, who argued that the choice to provide the information was one of “moral bankruptcy.”
On January 30, MSF released a new statement indicating a change of policy—they would no longer turn over any information to the Israeli authorities after ‘months of unsuccessful engagement with Israeli authorities,’ and their inability to secure assurances of staff safety and independence.
Humanitarian dependence had long been baked into the structure of the Israeli occupation, as well as the ineffective functioning of the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo Accords.
For decades, Israel has restricted all goods that could enter Gaza, and it tightened its restrictions even further multiple times since October 7, leading to famine. With no meaningful pushback on its actions, Israel has continued to shrink and restrict the space for humanitarian action, including banning UNRWA. It also recently destroyed its compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
The humanitarian paradigm across occupied Palestine has been one of destruction, restriction, and violence by Israeli forces, and the attempt by humanitarian agencies, both international and local, to fill in subsequent gaps in housing, education, and healthcare.
These agencies, however, must work within Israeli restrictions on movement of people and goods, as well as with the understanding that their staff are at real risk while they do their job.
The choice faced by MSF, to either acquiesce to Israel’s guidelines to be able to deliver care, or to protect their staff and independence but be denied access to a vulnerable and needy population, serves as a microcosm of this entire infrastructure. With the world’s political and financial support, Israel has built a system that allows it to both create massive humanitarian need and control how the response to that need is allowed to function.
At the whim of the Israeli government, lifelines for hundreds of thousands of people, living on occupied territory, can be cut off.
From the inception of the humanitarian industry in Palestine, many Palestinians and their allies have pushed back on this paradigm, arguing that part of the humanitarian mandate to save lives should include centring Palestinians and their needs, bearing witness to the atrocities they face, and using every tool at their disposal to push for accountability and an end to unlawful actions. Cooperating within the framework of those unlawful actions, even if the stated intention is to save lives, is to ultimately accept them.
Many credible figures and organisations have argued that Israel has committed the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, citing Israel’s siege as one of the techniques Israel has used in that campaign. While the tightest period of the siege may be over, Israel’s control of the humanitarian response in Gaza continues to grow more entrenched.
Undoubtedly, this will continue to cause avoidable death and injury, as millions live with inadequate shelter, food, water, and healthcare.
MSF’s short-lived decision to attempt to abide by Israel’s demands, yet unable to receive the guarantees to even do that safely, demonstrates that there is no end to this cycle of destruction and control.
Ultimately, it is not solely the responsibility of MSF, or any of the organisations working to deliver aid in Gaza, to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions. Over the past century, an entire political and legal infrastructure was built to, purportedly, protect human rights and lives.
Over time, we have seen those protections eroded and disregarded in settings around the world, including across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many of the countries now condemning Israel’s policies around delivering aid to Palestinians and decrying the humanitarian catastrophes those policies have caused, watched idly for decades. For years they failed to speak out as Israel ignored warnings and condemnations while its government continued its explicitly stated goal to seize Palestinian land and force the displacement of the Palestinian people.
It remains unclear if Israel will maintain its position or be pressured to loosen the guidelines, and how NGOs will work in the future if the bans are enforced. But left unchecked, this type of behaviour will not be quelled. Until there are real consequences for Israel’s illegal actions towards the Palestinians, with the denial of aid being just one of them, Palestinians will continue to pay the price—with their lives, livelihoods, and land.
Yara M. Asi, PhD, is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Arab Center DC and DAWN MENA, and co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights.
Follow Yara on X: @Yara_M_Asi
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.