“A violation of the duty to protect”: 37 international organizations banned from access to Gaza by Israel

Israel confirmed on Thursday, January 1, the ban on access to the Gaza Strip of 37 major international organizations, which it accuses of not having communicated the list of names of its employees, now officially required for “security” purposes.

This regulation is interpreted by certain NGOs as a sign of a desire by the Israeli authorities to intensify political control of Palestinian humanitarian actors. It raises fears of further slowdowns in the entry of aid into Gaza, devastated by two years of war and a majority of whose inhabitants urgently need housing, care and food security.

“Organizations that have failed to meet required standards of security and transparency will have their licenses suspended,” the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora and Combating Anti-Semitism said in a statement.

“The main failure identified is the refusal to provide complete and verifiable information regarding their employees, an essential requirement intended to prevent the infiltration of terrorist operators within humanitarian structures,” he said. “The message is clear: humanitarian assistance is welcome – the exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for the purposes of terrorism is not,” insisted the minister, Amichai Chikli, quoted in the text.

MSF, NRC, World Vision, Oxfam…

Israel has been heavily criticized by the international community in recent days as the deadline of Wednesday midnight local time for NGOs to comply with their new obligations approaches. Otherwise, they will have until March 1 to cease all activity in Gaza.

Among these organizations are major players in the sector, such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Care, World Vision and Oxfam.

On Wednesday, MSF explained that it had not transmitted the list of its employees because it had not obtained “guarantees and clarifications” from Israel regarding this “concerning” request. Shaina Low, spokesperson for the NRC, for her part denounced to AFP the “actions taken over the past two years to hinder and marginalize humanitarian actors”.

In Gaza, local employees are “exhausted” and their foreign colleagues “provide an additional level of assistance and security.” Their presence is a protection,” she explained, confirming the refusal of the Norwegian NGO to provide the identities to the authorities. “We offered alternatives, they refused. »

“Contempt for international humanitarian law”

On Wednesday, the European Union demanded that “obstacles” to humanitarian aid be removed. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, for his part estimated that “such arbitrary suspensions (further aggravate) an already intolerable situation for the population of Gaza”, where a fragile ceasefire came into force on October 10 between Israel and Hamas.

In 2024, Israel had already banned the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) from operating on its soil, accusing some of its employees of having participated in the operation. The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, described the Israeli regulations as a “dangerous precedent”, denouncing a “contempt for international humanitarian law” and a “multiplication of obstacles to aid operations”.

On Thursday, a group of 17 left-leaning Israeli organizations also condemned these restrictions. “Subordinating aid to political alignment, penalizing support for legal accountability and requiring the disclosure of sensitive personal data (…) constitute a violation of the duty of protection and expose workers to surveillance and attacks” on their rights, write the signatories in a joint press release.

The deregistration of NGOs “undermines humanitarian action (…), endangers staff and communities and compromises the effectiveness of aid distribution”, they add, regretting an “instrumentalization of bureaucracy”.

According to Cogat, the Israeli Defense Ministry body responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, an average of 4,200 aid trucks enter Gaza each week, or around 600 per day, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement. But only 100 to 300 carry humanitarian aid, according to NGOs and the United Nations.