‘Catastrophic’: UK, France condemn Israel’s ban of Gaza aid NGOs, ‘excessive restrictions’
Palestinian children wait for a meal at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza
Linda Dayan reports in Haaretz on 30 December 2025:
The United Kingdom, France, and Canada condemned on Tuesday Israel’s decision to shutter dozens of international NGOs providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza, urging the Israeli government to “lift these obstacles to humanitarian access and fulfill its commitments” in the territory.
In a statement signed by ten foreign ministers, the countries expressed “deep concern” over the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation and called on Israel to “ensure that international NGOs can operate in Gaza on a sustainable basis,” allow the UN and its partners to “continue their vital work,” and lift excessive restrictions on imports and the opening of border crossings.
The move to bar the organizations, announced earlier on Tuesday by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, is part of a reform of NGO registration procedures, which the ministry said responds to violations of security and transparency standards. The affected organizations, required to cease their activities by March, warned that the decision would have severe consequences for Palestinian life in the Gaza Strip.
The Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry, which leads an interministerial committee overseeing the registration of international NGOs, said in its statement that it had identified links between affiliates of certain organizations and terrorist groups in Gaza.
“Security reviews revealed that employees of certain organizations were involved in terrorist activity,” specifically accusing affiliates of Doctors Without Borders of ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. “Despite repeated requests, the organization failed to provide full disclosure regarding the identities and roles of these individuals,” it added.
Late Tuesday, responding to the Israeli government’s policy, 10 foreign ministers, including those from the U.K., France and Canada, expressed “deep concern” over the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation and called on Israel to “lift these obstacles to humanitarian access, to fulfill its commitments” in Gaza. They urged Israel to “ensure that international NGOs can operate in Gaza on a sustainable basis,” allow the UN and its partners to “continue their vital work,” and lift excessive restrictions on imports and the opening of border crossings.
On Wednesday, the Belgian foreign ministry urged the Israeli government “to remove all humanitarian access constraints, and to honour the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.”
“Humanitarian access is neither optional, nor conditional or political,” the statement included. “After impeding the work of the United Nations, the Government of Israel’s restrictive new requirements now deregister international NGO’s,” adding that “UNRWA and INGOs funded by Belgium comply with the highest standards of transparency, impartiality and independence.”
Philippe Ribero, the head of mission for Gaza and the West Bank in Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said that the Diaspora Affairs Ministry announcement was the first they had heard of the alleged links of their affiliates to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that they have not been provided with proof.
“They never came back to us with these allegations,” he told Haaretz on Tuesday. “We have never been informed beforehand by any authority about any of our staff members who could be problematic.” They are taking the claim seriously, he said.
MSF has its own vetting process and stresses that anyone involved in military activity would endanger its operations and that it takes all possible steps to prevent this. Ribero added, “We also have to make the point that this public claim came without any kind of evidence about it. Nothing has been substantiated, and it actually puts the humanitarian staff at risk.”
When trying to register the organization, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry requested that MSF send a list of its staff members with their personal information – part of new licensing guidelines announced last year, which are beginning to go into effect. “We sent a letter telling [the ministry] that we are not opposed, in principle, [to] providing a list, but we would like a few answers” regarding how the data will be used and who will have access to it. MSF proposed compromises, but did not receive a response from the ministry.
MSF has worked with COGAT, the Defense Ministry office that oversees the Palestinian Territories, but has never had a meeting with the Diaspora Affairs Ministry. “We would love to actually meet with them and have a conversation about the allegations … But we never met them.”
The organization treats tens of thousands of people per year in Gaza and the West Bank, Ribero said. If they lose their registration, as they are set to on January 1, “we don’t really know what will happen, and if we’ll be able to keep running our operations in both the West Bank and Gaza.”
He said that if they have to pull out of Gaza, “it will be a very, very difficult situation for the people there.”
COGAT said in a statement that MSF’s “attempts to portray itself as having a central impact on the medical response in the Gaza Strip misrepresent reality and are not supported by the data.”
New guidelines and broad grounds for delisting
In December 2024, the ministry announced new registration rules for international NGOs operating mainly in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, transferring oversight from the Social Affairs Ministry to a committee led by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry and including representatives from the Defense Ministry, COGAT and other government and security bodies.
That committee can refuse registry to organizations, or revoke their approval to work in Israel, if they or their staff members published calls to boycott Israel in the past seven years; if there is “reasonable basis to assume” that they oppose Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state; if they incite racism; support armed struggle against the State of Israel; or “actively advance delegitimization activities against the State of Israel.” Denying the Holocaust and the atrocities of October 7 are also grounds to be delisted.
As part of the process, NGOs, like MSF, had to submit personal data about their donors and Palestinian staff. NGOs have told Haaretz that letting a side in a conflict vet the personnel is a universal red line. In many of the countries where these organizations are based, it is illegal to disclose such sensitive information to third parties, putting them at risk of legal action in the countries in which they are based.
The Diaspora Affairs Ministry said in its announcement that just less than 15 percent of organizations were found to violate the guidelines, most of them for refusing to provide information on their staff, “a critical requirement designed to prevent the infiltration of terrorist operatives into humanitarian structures.”
Among the 37 organizations named by the ministry on Tuesday are several Doctors Without Borders branches, Oxfam branches, Norwegian Refugee Council, Defense for Children International, The International Rescue Committee and Medico. All of them were notified that their licenses would be denied as of January 1.
In their announcement, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry wrote that the delisting of these groups “will not impact the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” and that “Aid continues to be delivered through approved and vetted channels, including United Nations agencies, bilateral partners, and humanitarian organizations operating in full compliance with Israeli regulations.”
NGOs taken by surprise
Athena Rayburn, the executive director of the Association of International Development Agencies, or AIDA, an umbrella group of nearly 100 nonprofits that work in the Palestinian territories, said that the move took her and the organizations by surprise. They had long been in talks with Israeli figures to find a solution to the parts of the registration process with which the NGOs cannot legally comply, namely, giving Israel lists of their Palestinian staff and their personal information.
“The issue is that they never put in writing what it is they need this information for.” She told Haaretz that privately, “[Israel] tells us it’s because of security that they are going to vet our staff, and basically come back to organizations and tell them that this staff member is a combatant. You have to fire them. They don’t provide any evidence or allow us to conduct any investigation, and refuse to actually explain how the data [about the staff members] is going to be used, who’s going to have access to it, or what the full purpose is.”
In Gaza, “Where you have 500 aid workers that have been killed in less than two years, it’s extremely concerning, handing over information like this to one of the parties to the conflict, because we don’t know that they might use it for military or intelligence purposes.”
The Israeli officials also shot down the option of organizations conducting their own vetting and investigations, or enlisting a third party to do so, so that they can have the evidence needed for termination. “They have refused to have a dialogue with us to actually look at other options, and have said, basically, ‘you give us this information, or you get out,'” she said.
She said that in many meetings with Israeli officials in recent weeks, the impact of this decision has been made clear. “INGOs are the largest implementing partner, aside from UNRWA, inside Gaza. For example, 100 percent of the treatment for severe malnutrition of kids in Gaza is INGO-supported. One in three healthcare facilities [are run by] INGOs.” Palestinian NGOs and the United Nations simply do not have the staff needed to deliver assistance to Gaza’s 2 million people, she added.
The organizations that have had their registration revoked are “the largest organizations that operate inside Gaza. Around 90 percent of INGO operations in Gaza are at risk because of this requirement.” Many of those that did successfully register, she said, do not operate and work in Gaza, or are newer.
COGAT said that the organizations that have had their registration revoked did not supply aid to Gaza during the current cease-fire, and in the past, only accounted for 1 percent of the total volume of aid. “The decision will not result in any future harm to the scope of humanitarian aid entering the Strip,” it said. “Instead of spreading false campaigns … organizations seeking to operate in Gaza should complete the registration process.”
For AIDA, the next step is to take the issue abroad. “We have done our best to reach out to the U.S. administration,” she said, including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – figures who were crucial in inking the Gaza cease-fire. “This deregistration of humanitarian operations in Gaza puts the cease-fire at risk, and is one of the key issues that will prevent us from moving to phase two of the peace plan, which President Trump spent a huge amount of capital trying to get moving forward,” said Rayburn.
The Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum consisting of UN entities and NGOs, said that it is “urging the Israeli authorities to reconsider today’s announcement on international NGOs, which are an essential part of the life-saving humanitarian operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Nir Hasson and Liza Rozovsky contributed to this report.
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