JUST days into the new year, the Gaza Strip already faces a disturbing development as it tries to recover from the war that has devastated the Palestinian territory and its people.
Israel has banned 37 humanitarian aid organizations from entering Gaza for failing to submit a list of the names of their staff. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the groups of allowing themselves to be infiltrated by Hamas.
The aid agencies have until March to comply with the registration order.
The order has sparked international outrage. In a joint letter, 53 relief aid groups accused Israel of severely choking the delivery of food, shelter and health care in Gaza.
“Humanitarian access is not optional, conditional, or political,” they said. “It is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law. This move would also 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 and the role of the Palestinian Authority.”
Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain called on Israel to ensure that aid groups can “operate in Gaza in a sustained and predictable way.”
Doctors Without Borders, which has 40 international staffers in Gaza, said that since July 2025, “we have been involved in a re-registration process and to date, we have not received a response. “We still have 60 days during which we could work without being re-registered, and so we would have to end our activities in March.”
Last month, the Israeli parliament passed a law that stripped the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, of diplomatic immunity, effectively forbidding it from operating in Gaza.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini decried the legislation as “part of an ongoing, systematic campaign to discredit UNRWA and thereby obstruct the core role that the agency plays in providing human-development assistance and services to Palestine refugees.”
It is not an isolated case. Israel has long accused humanitarian groups working in Gaza of abetting Hamas.
The International Court of Justice has rejected Israel’s allegations against the UN agency, and ruled that Israel is legally bound to allow the agency to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza.
The UN General Assembly has endorsed the ICJ ruling, but that did not stop Israel’s ambassador to the UN from labeling UNRWA as “a hotbed of terrorism.”
The 20-point peace formula for Gaza, brokered mainly by United States President Donald Trump, guarantees the free flow and distribution of humanitarian aid through the United Nations and its agencies, the Red Crescent, and other international institutions.
That guarantee has been breached by Israel, as it continues to limit the entry of relief goods at border crossings to almost a trickle.
The enclave’s health infrastructure has all but collapsed. Because medical supplies are scarce, Gaza’s 36 hospitals are struggling to stay open.
A particularly harsh winter has worsened living conditions in Gaza.
The peace process itself has not moved beyond the hostage-prisoner exchange. The ceasefire that was supposed to pave the way for the phased pullout of Israeli forces from Gaza has been pockmarked with clashes.
“The centrality of international aid groups to Gaza’s survival is itself a measure of the depth of the destruction inflicted on Palestinian society,” noted Ghada Majadli, a public policy analyst with a master’s degree in human rights and transitional justice from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “These actors have long operated in spaces where Palestinian institutions have been dismantled and political solutions postponed.”
Majadli sees Israel following “a coherent strategy: first, generate dependence through sieges, destruction and institutional dismantling; then, instrumentalize this dependence by controlling or removing the means of survival.”
Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, an international relief organization, compared the situation in Gaza to a house on fire.
“You have the right to lock your door, but if you have a fire inside your house, you need to open the door to the fire squad to come in and help. People are burning to death.”
Unless the door is opened, the fire will turn Gaza into a wasteland.
