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Israel said on Wednesday that the country’s supreme court had rejected a petition seeking to suspend a government ban on 37 foreign NGOs operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Supreme Court gave the organizations 30 days to comply with new screening procedures, including the submission of employee lists “or cease operations,” the government press office said in a statement.
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In the ruling, provided to AFP by a lawyer in the case and issued on Tuesday, the court said, “the petitions are rejected, and the state is allowed to require NGOs to provide identifying information on employees as a condition for registration and operation under the procedure.”
The organizations, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE were notified on December 30, 2025 that their Israeli registrations had expired and that they had 60 days to renew them by providing lists of their Palestinian staff.
If they failed to do so, they would have to cease operations in Gaza and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, from March 1.
The NGOs petitioned the Supreme Court via an umbrella organization, AIDA, after their charity registration in Israel was revoked.
“The HCJ (High Court of Justice) ruling is deeply disappointing, as it once again reflects the marginal status accorded to international law within the Israeli judicial system,” Yotam Ben-Hillel, a lawyer who represented the NGOs in court, said in a statement.
Ben-Hillel told AFP that Israel could not legally force organizations to cease operations in the West Bank and Gaza in cases where NGOs were registered with Palestinian authorities.
But the loss of their Israeli registration status means they would no longer be able to coordinate entry of aid and foreign staff with Israeli authorities, who control all access points to Gaza and the West Bank.
“This is another stage in harming the humanitarian aid in the region in general (and) particularly in Gaza,” Ben-Hillel told AFP.
The Israeli defense ministry body in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said that the new registration process was “designed to ensure Hamas doesn’t infiltrate humanitarian organizations and use them as a disguise for its terror purposes.”
NGOs including MSF, 15 of whose employees have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war in 2023, argued they did not wish to share employee lists out of fear for their safety.
Felipe Ribero, MSF head of mission in the Palestinian territories, told AFP that its operations were still ongoing in Gaza.
“For now, we still have a bit of operating space”, he said, adding that the organization had managed to save medicine and other aid to keep operating with local staff.
“But the problem is always the same: how are we going to resupply?”
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