More than 50 nongovernmental organizations are protesting new Israeli regulations they contend will further degrade humanitarian assistance to Palestinians and place already endangered relief workers at even greater risk.
The international NGOs issued a statement May 6 imploring the world community to join their opposition to the overly complex registration requirements for aid groups operating in Gaza and other areas controlled by Israel.
“Based on vague, broad, politicized and open-ended criteria, these rules appear designed to assert control over independent humanitarian, development and peacebuilding operations, silence advocacy grounded in international humanitarian and human rights law, and further entrench Israeli control and de facto annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory,” the statement said.
Humanitarian aid groups have operated under increasingly severe restraints for more than a year, the organizations said.
“In 2024, they reached millions of people across the (occupied Palestinian territory) with essential services — from food and water to mobile clinics, legal aid and education. The new registration rules now threaten to shut this work down. These measures go beyond routine policy. They mark a serious escalation in restrictions on humanitarian and civic space and risk setting a dangerous precedent.”
These measures … mark a serious escalation in restrictions on humanitarian and civic space and risk setting a dangerous precedent.”
Introduced in March, Israel’s new visa and registration requirements grant authorities extensive leeway in approving or denying NGO applications to serve the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank.
The policy demands detailed information on organizations’ international operations, “including an annual report,” a budget for the preceding year and “an audited financial statement prepared by a Certified Public Accountant for the past three years,” according to Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
Applicants also must provide comprehensive lists of donors with background information on each, the dates and amounts of donations, and the percentage each donation represented in a budget.
Furthermore, detailed personal information also must be shared about foreign-born employees, including countries of birth, passport numbers and expiration dates, cell phone numbers and proof of insurance coverage. An NGO or an employee can be rejected for inciting racism, supporting “an armed struggle by an enemy state or a terrorist organization against the State of Israel,” or promoting boycotts of the nation.
But 55 international NGOs, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee and Save the Children, contend the new restrictions are part of Israel’s ongoing effort to restrict aid to Palestinians and heighten the danger faced by relief workers.
“These new rules are part of a broader, long-term crackdown on humanitarian and civic space, marked by heightened surveillance and attacks, and a series of actions that restrict humanitarian access, compromise staff safety, and undermine core principles of humanitarian action,” according to the joint statement.
Those actions include hampering supplies through logistical obstacles and bureaucratic hurdles, suspending work visas for foreign staffers and enacting legislation banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency from assisting Palestinians.
The campaign includes the killing of “more than 400 humanitarian workers in Gaza, injuring and detaining countless others, and repeatedly attacking marked and notified humanitarian premises, facilities or convoys,” the group contends.
Making NGO registration “conditional on political and ideological alignment, undermining the neutrality, impartiality and independence of humanitarian actors” is just the latest element of Israel’s campaign to repress Palestinians and international aid groups, they say. “Under international humanitarian law, occupying powers are obligated to facilitate impartial humanitarian assistance and ensure the welfare of the protected population. Any attempt to condition humanitarian access on political alignment or penalize organizations for fulfilling their mandate risks breaching this framework.”
The organizations are calling on the international community to advocate to protect the safe delivery of humanitarian relief.
The groups also urge global actors to take “concrete political and diplomatic action beyond statements of concern to ensure unhindered humanitarian access and prevent the erosion of principled aid delivery.”
Otherwise, Israel will simply move ahead with efforts to legitimize the dismantling of humanitarian aid “and further the annexation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker humanitarian group, said in releasing the statement. “These rules and related legislation are also designed to silence organizations and threaten civil society as a whole. Israel wants to turn humanitarian aid into an instrument of repression against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Other signatories to the statement include Action Aid, Children Not Numbers, Humanity First UK, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Japan International Volunteer Center, Norwegian Church Aid, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Oxfam and Pax Christi International.