Gaza Herald – Seventeen international aid organizations petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, demanding the suspension of a government order that would force them to halt life-saving operations in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East part of occupied Jerusalem. The groups stressed that stopping their work would cause a “humanitarian collapse” for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
The petition came after Israel ordered 37 NGOs to cease operations starting March 1, 2026, unless they provided detailed lists of Palestinian staff members. Organizations warned that compliance would endanger their employees, undermine humanitarian neutrality, and violate European data protection laws.
Aid agencies involved in the petition included Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and CARE. They emphasized that their work in Gaza, where millions rely on food, water, medical care, and shelter, remained critical after more than two years of genocide.
The Israeli government backed its order by claiming that NGO registrations had expired in December 2025 and that failure to submit staff information justified halting operations. Aid groups described the move as a direct threat to their ability to provide essential services.
Oxfam and other organizations highlighted that halting aid operations would not only affect individual NGOs but the entire humanitarian system.
The UN reported that since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, 133 NGO workers had been killed in Israeli attacks, including 15 from MSF, underlining the extreme risks faced by humanitarian staff in the region.
The petitioners proposed alternative measures, such as donor-audited vetting systems, to allow aid operations to continue without surrendering sensitive staff information to Israeli authorities, aiming to protect both the workers and the vulnerable populations they serve.
