Israel threatens to ban major humanitarian organizations as hunger worsens in Gaza

More than 100 international organizations denounced Thursday that Israel is not allowing them to deliver their humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza, citing new registration rules approved this year that require NGOs to share information deemed sensitive. Meanwhile, tons of food, medicine, and vital supplies are stored across the border, just a few kilometers from where two million Palestinians are suffering from extreme hunger.

Since early March, Israeli authorities have rejected dozens of applications from various NGOs, claiming they are “not authorized to deliver aid.” Refusals may be based on “vague and politicized criteria, such as the alleged ‘delegitimization’ of the State of Israel,” the organizations say.

In July alone, “more than 60 applications were denied with this justification,” adds the statement signed by Action Against Hunger, ActionAid International, Anera, the Assembly for Peace Cooperation, Care, Caritas, Médecins du Monde, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Plan International, and Save the Children, among others.

In March, Israel approved new registration regulations requiring these organizations to provide details of their private donors, lists of their Palestinian staff, and other confidential information. The organizations believe this bureaucratic process is driven by a desire to control them and fear being banned from continuing to work in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Some have even received a seven-day ultimatum to provide lists of their Palestinian staff.

NGOs have made it clear that sharing such data is illegal, incompatible with humanitarian principles, and endangers their staff. According to the UN, more than 500 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. They also point out that these new rules are “incompatible with established international law” as they consolidate Israel’s control of the occupied Palestinian territory.

“This registration process signals to international NGOs that their ability to operate could be conditioned by losing their independence and their ability to express themselves,” says Bushra Khalidi, an Oxfam Intermón representative in Palestine.

This organization has assets worth $2.5 million, whose entry into Gaza has been blocked by Israel. Another signatory, the U.S.-based Anera, estimates it has shipments worth $7 million waiting at the gates of Gaza.

Blocking this aid leaves “hospitals without basic supplies, children, people with disabilities, and the elderly dying of hunger and preventable diseases, and humanitarian workers going to work on empty stomachs,” the NGOs denounce.

Last Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied that his country was trying to starve the two million inhabitants of Gaza, although he did admit that there had been a policy of “deprivation” of food. He therefore announced that the volume of humanitarian aid entering the Strip would increase, primarily thanks to humanitarian flights and new distribution points run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a fund promoted by Israel with U.S. support to distribute food in Gaza.

The organizations suspect that these obstacles to their work are part of a broader strategy to strengthen the GHF. According to the UN, at least 859 people have died since the end of May near its four food distribution points in the Gaza Strip, most of them shot by Israeli soldiers or security agents supporting them.

“The militarized food distribution program has turned famine into a weapon and increased suffering,” denounces Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza.

According to the UN, virtually the entire population in the Strip has been starving for months, with more than a third going without food for days. Currently, more than 62,000 tons of life-saving aid are needed per month, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

The NGOs that signed the statement urge the international community to “pressure Israel to end the use of aid” as another tool in this war, to stop forcing them to share sensitive information, and to immediately open all border crossings.

“The answer — to save lives and humanity from complicity in an orchestrated mass famine — is to open all borders, permanently, to the thousands of trucks, millions of meals and medical supplies, ready and waiting,” urged Sean Carroll, president of Anera.

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