TEL AVIV: Israel’s decision to revoke the licenses of more than three dozen humanitarian organizations this week has aid groups scrambling to grapple with what this means for their operations in Gaza and their ability to help tens of thousands of struggling Palestinians.
The 37 groups represent some of the most prominent of the more than 100 independent nongovernmental organizations working in Gaza, alongside United Nations agencies. Those banned include Doctors Without Borders, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam and Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The groups do everything from providing tents and water to supporting clinics and medical facilities. The overall impact, however, remains unclear.
The most immediate impact of the license revocation is that Israel will no longer allow the groups to bring supplies into the Gaza Strip or send international staffers into the territory. Israel says all suspended groups have to halt their operations by March 1.
Some groups have already been barred from bringing in aid. The Norwegian Refugee Council, for example, said it has not been allowed to bring in supplies in 10 months, leaving it distributing tents and aid brought in by other groups.
Israel says the banned groups make up only a small part of aid operations in Gaza.
But aid officials say they fulfill crucial specific functions. In a joint statement Tuesday, the UN and leading NGOs said the organizations that are still licensed by Israel “are nowhere near the number required just to meet immediate and basic needs” in Gaza.
The ban further strains aid operations even as Gaza’s over 2 million Palestinians still face a humanitarian crisis more than 12 weeks into a ceasefire. The UN says that although famine has been staved off, more than a quarter of families still eat only one meal a day and food prices remain out of reach for many; more than 1 million people need better tents as winter storms lash the territory.
Why were their licenses revoked?
Earlier this year, Israel introduced strict new registration requirements for aid agencies working in Gaza. Most notably, it required groups to provide the names and personal details of local and international staff and said it would ban groups for a long list of criticisms of Israel.
The registration process is overseen by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, led by a far-right member of the ruling Likud party.
Israel says the rules aim to prevent Hamas and other militants from infiltrating the groups, something it has said was happening throughout the 2-year-old war. The UN, which leads the massive aid program in Gaza, and independent groups deny the allegations and Israeli claims of major diversion of aid supplies by Hamas.
Aid organizations say they did not comply, in part, because they feared that handing over staff information could endanger them. More than 500 aid workers have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the United Nations.
Israel denies targeting aid workers. But the group say Israel has been vague about how it would use the data.
The groups also said Israel was vague about how it would use the data.
“Demanding staff lists as a condition for access to territory is an outrageous overreach,” Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said Friday. It said Israeli officials had refused its attempts to find alternatives.
A December report on MSF issued by an Israeli government team recommended rejection of the group’s license. It pointed primarily to statements by the group criticizing Israel, including referring to its campaign in Gaza as genocide and calling its monthslong ban on food entering the territory earlier this year as “a starvation tactic.” It said the statements violated neutrality and constituted “delegitimization of Israel.”
The report also repeated claims that an MSF employee killed in by an Israeli airstrike in 2024 was an operative with the Islamic Jihad militant group. That, it said, suggested MSF “maintains connections with a terrorist group.”
MSF on Friday denied the allegations, saying it would “never knowingly employ anyone involved in military activities.” It said that its statements cited by Israel simply described the destruction its teams witnessed in Gaza.
“The fault lies with those committing these atrocities, not with those who speak of them,” it said.
Aid groups have a week from Dec. 31 to appeal the process.
Medical services could see biggest impact
Independent NGOs play a major role in propping up Gaza’s health sector, devastated by two years of Israeli bombardment and restrictions on supplies.
MSF said Israel’s decision would have a catastrophic impact on its work in Gaza, where it provides funding and international staff for six hospitals as well as running two field hospitals and eight primary health centers, clinics and medical points. It also runs two of Gaza’s five stabilization centers helping children with severe malnutrition.
Its teams treated 100,000 trauma cases, performed surgeries on 10,000 patients and handled a third of Gaza’s births, the group says. It has 60 international staffers in the West Bank and Gaza and more than 1,200 local staff — most medical professionals.
Since the ceasefire began in early October, MSF has brought in about 7 percent of the 2,239 tons (2,032 metric tons) of medical supplies that Israel has allowed into Gaza, according to a UN tracking dashboard. That makes it the largest provider of medical supplies after UN agencies and the Red Cross, according to the dashboard.
Medecins du Monde, another group whose license is being halted, runs another four primary health clinics.
Overburdened Palestinian staff
Aid groups say the most immediate impact will likely be the inability to send international staff into Gaza.
Foreign staff provide key technical expertise and emotional support for their Palestinian colleagues.
“Having international presence in Gaza is a morale booster for our staff who are already feeling isolated,” said Shaina Low, communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is one of the main NGOs providing shelter supplies and fresh water to displaced people.
NRC has roughly 30 international staff who rotate in and out of Gaza working alongside some 70 Palestinians.
While any operations by the 37 groups in the West Bank will likely remain open, those with offices in east Jerusalem, which Israel considers its territory, might have to close.
Halt on supplies
Many of the 37 groups already had been blocked from bringing supplies into Gaza since March, said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
What changes with the formal license revocation is “that these practices are now formalized, giving Israel full impunity to restrict operations and shut out organizations it disagrees with,” she said.
Some of the groups have turned to buying supplies within Gaza rather than bringing them in, but that is slower and more expensive, she said. Other groups dug into reserve stocks, pared down distribution and had to work with broken or heavily repaired equipment because they couldn’t bring in new ones.
Amed Khan, an American humanitarian philanthropist who has been privately donating medicine and emergency nutrition for children to Gaza, said the impact extends beyond the aid groups.
He relies on NGOs to receive and distribute the supplies, but the fewer groups that Israel approves, the harder it is to find one.
“It’s death by bureaucracy,” he said.
International aid groups grapple with what Israel’s ban will mean for their work in Gaza
https://arab.news/52e93
International aid groups grapple with what Israel’s ban will mean for their work in Gaza
- The most immediate impact of the license revocation is that Israel will no longer allow the groups to bring supplies into the Gaza Strip or send international staffers into the territory
Israel says it has launched ‘broad wave’ of strikes on Iran, as Tehran widens its response across the region
- US military says 17 Iranian navy ships destroyed, struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran thus far
- US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran: Iranian Red Crescent
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/TEHRAN: Israel early Wednesday launched new attacks on Iran as the US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets inside the Islamic republic, which tried to impose a cost by expanding a missile and drone barrage across the region.
With global energy prices on the rise, President Donald Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint into the Gulf that Iran has threatened to seal off.
Israel’s military said it launched a “broad wave of strikes” after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three separate missile barrages at Israel, causing mild injuries to a woman in Tel Aviv.
The US military has destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including a submarine, and struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran, the commander of the US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“Today, there is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman,” US Central Command’s Brad Cooper said in a video posted to X.
Cooper said the US military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from US ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the US is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said, adding that the US military is targeting “all the things that can shoot at us.”
“These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” he said in the video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called “shock and awe” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
Iran‘s response
The US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that could not be independently confirmed.
Iran vowed to inflict a heavy price in retaliation. Drones struck adjacent the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire but inflicting no casualties, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
The attacks came a day after strikes on the US embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City and on a US air base in Bahrain.
“We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centers, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard General Ebrahim Jabbari said.
Iranian attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens in the Gulf region, according to various reports quoting local authorities.
Among the latest death was an 11-year-old girl who was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the UK military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Iran hits US embassies
The US State Department said Tuesday it’s preparing military and charter flights for Americans who want to leave the Middle East. Several other countries also arranged evacuation flights for their citizens.
An attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire,” according to the Saudi Arabian Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
An Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the US consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington. He said all personnel were accounted for.
The United Arab Emirates said it has intercepted the vast majority of more than 1,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks against it.
US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon said they were closed to the public.
The US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. And US citizens were urged to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, though many were stranded because of airspace closures.
The US military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.
Four of the American soldiers killed were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt, Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who received a posthumous promotion in rank. They were assigned to the Iowa-based 103rd Sustainment Command.
Ghost town
In Tehran, residents who have not fled remained shut away in their homes for fear of the US-Israeli bombardment.
The Iranian capital is normally home to around 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here,” said Samireh, a 33-year-old nurse.
Authorities had previously urged people to leave the city, and police officers, armed security forces and armored vehicles have been stationed at main junctions, carrying out random checks on vehicles.
In the more upmarket north of Tehran, the meowing of cats and chirping of birds replaced the usual din of traffic jams.
Iranian authorities said a strike on a school in the city of Minab on the first day of the war killed more than 150 people.
