Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section I Israel/Occupied Palestine) 15.08.2025
According to Haaretz[i]: “More than 100 organizations, including well-known and well-known NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Oxfam and dozens of others, have warned that a new procedure published by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs regarding the registration of workers is harming their ability to operate in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and called on their governments to pressure Israel”
The international organizations said that most of them “have not been able to get a single truck” of humanitarian aid into Gaza since March. The NGOs, which operate in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, said in a statement on Thursday night that Israel does not allow them to bring aid into the area. This is despite the government’s announcement last month that it would allow aid organizations to bring goods into the Gaza Strip.
According to the statement, last month alone, the NGOs encountered more than 60 refusals to bring aid into the Gaza Strip – leaving millions of dollars worth of water, medicine, food and tent materials stuck in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt “while Palestinians starve.” The statement also said that a new procedure for approving their activities, which came into effect in March, could cause many of them to evacuate their entire international staff from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
According to the new procedure, an inter-ministerial committee headed by the director general of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism is responsible for registering international aid organizations, instead of the Ministry of Social Affairs, which was previously responsible for doing so. The procedure also establishes a number of criteria that allow the revocation of an organization’s registration or the cancellation of an existing registration, including the denial of Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, a call by the organization or any of its employees for a boycott of Israel or the settlements over the past seven years, “delegitimization activity against the State of Israel,” and the like. Similar criteria may also be used, according to the procedure, to prevent the entry of an employee of the organization into Israel or the Occupied Territories. In addition, the procedure requires organizations to provide detailed information about their international employees, including providing a certificate of good conduct and details about the employees’ family members. The organizations claim that the demand contradicts the privacy laws in force in the European Union.
Attorney Yotam Ben Hillel, who represents the umbrella organization of the International Humanitarian Organizations (AIDA), said that the new procedure is populist, “whose entire purpose is to persecute the organizations, who have been working in the territories and in Gaza for decades, and their activities have never been impeccable.” He added that the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and the committee it established seek total control over organizations that are committed to the principles of neutrality and professionalism under international law. “It has no parallel in the world,” he said.
Ben Hillel explained that the organizations are legally prohibited from providing the details they are required to provide, since they are subject to very strict legislation in their countries of origin and in the European Union, regarding privacy protection. No one promises organizations what will be done with the information, and to whom it will be transferred. This puts the organizations in an impossible situation: on the one hand, they will be exposed to severe sanctions (including heavy fines) in their countries of origin if they provide the information, and on the other hand, if they do not provide the information, Israel will try to stop their humanitarian activities in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. “Israel is demanding that all the employees of the organizations be fired, if they are not approved within three weeks. This is another abdication of its obligations under international law and a complete abandonment of the Gazans, who are desperate for food, medicine, and shelter,” he said.
The foreign ministers of 27 Western countries, including several European countries as well as Australia, Japan and Canada, as well as EU Foreign Minister Kaia Callas, issued a statement yesterday demanding that international organizations be registered and allowed to bring in aid. In response, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Shikli issued a statement yesterday, in which he claimed that the foreign ministers are defending terror-supporting organizations. Shikli also wrote that “Israel is promoting real humanitarian activity, but will not allow hostile elements and supporters of terrorism to operate in its territory and in the territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza under humanitarian cover.”
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) of course denied the allegations. “The reality is quite the opposite,” they asserted with a determined brow. “Israel is working to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, while the Hamas terror organization is trying to take advantage of the aid in order to gain military strength and consolidate its control over the population. This is sometimes done under the auspices of some international aid organizations, knowingly or unknowingly. In response, in accordance with the directives of the political echelon, and prior to the resumption of the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, the Israeli security establishment has formulated a new mechanism for the entry of aid, with the aim of ensuring that the aid reaches the population directly and not to Hamas. As part of the mechanism, organizations are required to carry out an orderly registration process at the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs in Israel, which includes, among other things, sharing a list of the organization’s employees operating in Gaza for the purpose of a preliminary security assessment. The registration process is based on clear professional and security criteria, which are intended to maintain the purity of the humanitarian system while preventing terrorist elements from infiltrating the aid mechanism. This is a transparent and clear process, which was presented to all organizations in advance“
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2025-08-13/ty-article/.premium/00000198-a477-d539-a5b8-fd7772da0000