Israel’s December 30, 2025, decision to revoke the licenses of 37 international humanitarian aid organizations – effectively banning them from operating in Gaza and the West Bank as of March 1, 2026 – marks a chilling escalation in its genocidal campaign, designed to strangulate the last remnants of life in the besieged enclave.
The list, issued by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and confirmed by Haaretz, targets essential groups like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, CARE International, Action Against Hunger, Handicap International, and the Norwegian Refugee Council – pillars of aid that have delivered food, water, medical care, shelter, and psychological support to Gaza’s 2.3 million people for decades.
Retroactive to January 1, 2026, the ban forces these organizations to halt operations, evacuate staff, and surrender assets or face criminal prosecution under Israel’s “anti-terror” laws. Demanding invasive staff data, loyalty oaths, and prohibiting any “delegitimization” of Israel (including reports on apartheid or settler violence), this move is not about security – it’s a calculated bid to erase witnesses, deepen famine, and accelerate the physical and cultural annihilation of Palestinians.
The ban’s impact on Gaza will be catastrophic, further ravaging an already devastated population. With these 37 groups expelled, Gaza loses 60 per cent of its field hospitals, half its food distribution capacity, and vital services in sanitation, shelter, and child protection. Famine – already weaponized through Israel’s blockade of aid convoys – will intensify, condemning children, the elderly, the wounded, and the displaced to even greater suffering from hunger, disease, and trauma. This aligns with Israel’s broader policy of destroying infrastructure and blocking relief, tactics UN experts have labeled genocidal. As the International Court of Justice monitors compliance with its orders to prevent genocide, Israel defies the world by accelerating the very conditions – starvation, displacement, deprivation – that define it.
In the lead up to the implementation of this ban, eyewitness accounts from Gaza report that markets have more food than they’ve had since the beginning months of the genocide, but that distribution of this food is still a massive problem. The fear is that this is nothing more than a temporary Israeli propaganda ploy. As bombings and killings being to intensify again under the sham “cease-fire”, Gazans fear that March 1st will mark the beginning of a more viscious phase of the zionist’s genocidal scheme.
At the heart of this criminalization is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Gaza’s aid lifeline. Israel’s baseless accusations – claiming 12 UNRWA staff joined the October 7, 2023, resistance operations – triggered funding cuts by the US, Germany, Sweden, and others, crippling operations and exacerbating the crisis.
UN and independent probes debunked the claims as rooted in coerced confessions and fabricated evidence, but the harm was irreparable: billions slashed, schools and clinics shuttered. Israeli forces have demolished UNRWA’s West Bank headquarters in violation of international law and bombed over 190 Gaza facilities since 2023, killing hundreds of staff and displacing survivors.
This article is excerpted from ‘Strangling Gaza’s Survivors, Criminalizing Humanity for Zionist Conquest: The Banning of Humanitarian Relief in Occupied Palestine’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org
