Israel has barred thirty-seven international nonprofits from operating in Gaza, while approving twenty-three charities—among them, high-profile Christian and Jewish aid agencies—for charitable work in the conflict-ridden region.
The banned nongovernmental organizations include branches of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Oxfam, the Danish Refugee Council, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, Caritas Internationalis, and the American Friends Service Committee.
On December 31, 2025, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that the proscribed nongovernmental organizations had refused to provide transparency about their personnel and funding sources. “That raises a simple question: What are they hiding?” it asked.
Israel tightened restrictions after the nongovernmental organizations refused to file details of foreign and Palestinian workers, including their passport numbers. An investigation by NGO Monitor, published in December, found that the agencies were colluding with Hamas by covering up or downplaying its atrocities, Focus on Western Islamism reported.
“Humanitarian assistance is welcome—the exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for terrorist purposes is unacceptable.”
Documents from the Gaza Interior Security Mechanism, a unit within the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security, showed that the Islamist outfit forced nongovernmental organizations to accept Hamas operatives as “guarantors” by placing them in senior administrative positions of director, deputy director, or board chair within the nongovernmental organizations. “The message is clear: Humanitarian assistance is welcome—the exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for terrorist purposes is unacceptable,” minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli added.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed Israel’s suspension of the aid agencies as “outrageous” and “the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access.” “Demanding staff lists as a condition for access to territory is an outrageous overreach,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on January 2, 2026. “MSF has legitimate concerns about the registration requirement to share personal information of our Palestinian staff with Israeli authorities.”
A twenty-five-page report published by Israeli authorities in December 2025 recommended stripping Doctors Without Borders of its license. None of the Doctors Without Borders subsidiaries fulfilled the registration requirements, the review concluded. All declined to provide comprehensive staff lists, including details of Palestinian employees.
“The organizations in question operate under the pretext of humanitarian activity, while in practice advancing an extreme anti-Israeli narrative, maintaining affiliations with terrorist entities, promoting boycotts, and willfully disregarding the registration obligations,” the report stated.
It also identified “substantial indications of direct or indirect affiliations between MSF Belgium and terrorist organizations” and accused Médecins Sans Frontières of having two employees who held membership in Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
NGO Monitor confirmed that “Israel’s concerns regarding extensive MSF’s terror ties in Gaza, and the lack of oversight by the NGO, are substantiated by credible and open-source evidence.” It listed multiple instances of terror links, including the case of Médecins Sans Frontières staffer Fadi Al-Wadiya, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative responsible for “developing the terror group’s missiles” in June 2024.
NGO Monitor explained that Israeli policies to grant humanitarian visas grew out of pre-1967 Jordanian procedures. “The need for fundamental reform became pronounced as evidence emerged of supposedly ‘neutral’ NGOs abusing the system to carry out patently non-humanitarian political advocacy, and even justifying cooperation with terror groups such as Hamas,” it explained.
For decades, legacy aid organizations embraced a policy agenda beyond their stated mission; some openly sympathized with terror.
Meanwhile, Israel approved three top evangelical Christian aid agencies to provide relief in Gaza. The best-known of the nongovernmental organizations cleared to work in Gaza is Samaritan’s Purse, headed by Franklin Graham, son of the world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham. “I believe Israel, the nation, and Israel the Jewish people are God’s chosen people. As Christians, we stand with Israel, we want to support Israel, and we do all that we can, especially in these times of great trouble,” Graham said in 2024, reflecting the leader’s pro-Israel stance.
Israel also cleared Christian Aid Ministries for work in Gaza, which has no links with the United Kingdom-based Christian Aid, a left-wing advocacy outfit. Rather, the U.S.-based agency is evangelical and gets much of its support from Amish, Mennonite, and other conservative Anabaptist groups and individuals.
United Bible Societies, a global network that works with the evangelical Palestinian Bible Society, to “share the Gospel’s message, even inviting Muslims to learn about Christianity,” also plans to provide humanitarian assistance in Gaza after Israel gave it clearance.
Israel also granted licenses to Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference, and the International Medical Corps, which has significant Jewish management and links to the Jewish Distribution Committee, as well as the Multifaith Alliance, founded by Georgette Bennett, daughter of Holocaust survivors.
For decades, legacy aid organizations embraced a policy agenda beyond their stated mission; some openly sympathized with terror. Israel today signals that those days are over, as one more example of the October 7, 2023, paradigm shift.