New regulations require political compliance from groups trying to provide humanitarian assistance to besieged Palestinians.
Israel’s decision to suspend the operations of 37 international aid groups represents a dangerous escalation in its ongoing genocidal campaign, which has destroyed Gaza’s ability to sustain life through bombings and sieges, and now seeks to deprive survivors of the last remaining forms of assistance.
Although presented as an administrative measure, this last action cannot be understood in isolation. It is the culmination of a longer process that has unfolded over the past two years, during which Israel has systematically dismantled the humanitarian and medical infrastructure that supported Gaza’s civilian population.
By cutting funding and delegitimizing Unrwa, the main agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees, and by leveling charges against humanitarian and health personnel in the absence of a significant global response, Israel has further entrenched a long-standing system of instrumentalizing humanitarian aid.
Although the Israeli government initially justified the suspension of aid groups as a consequence of failure to comply with new registration requirements, it later noted in a statement that the process “aimed at preventing the exploitation of aid by Hamas, which in the past has operated under the guise of certain international aid organizations, knowingly or unknowingly.”
Israel has long accused Hamas of exploiting humanitarian aid, although such allegations have been repeatedly refuted, including by senior Israeli military officials.
The new regulatory framework goes far beyond compliance with technical requirements. It introduces explicitly political and ideological conditions for the provision of aid, disqualifying organizations that supported boycotts of Israel or that engaged in “delegitimization campaigns.”
Such criteria not only regulate humanitarian aid work; they effectively silence dissent, making the ability to provide humanitarian assistance conditional on political compliance.
Unrwa test case
The dismantling of Unrwa was a crucial test. For decades, the agency served as the backbone of civilian life for Palestinian refugees, providing medical care, education, food and social services under conditions of Israeli occupation and siege.
After October 7, 2023, Israel intensified its efforts to recast Unrwa, not as a humanitarian agency operating under an international mandate, but as a political problem to be neutralized.
Allegations that a limited number of Unrwa employees had ties to Hamas or were involved in the October 7 attacks were quickly widespread and escalated into accusations against the organization as a whole. These allegations have triggered widespread donor suspensions — including an immediate freeze on funding from the US, one of the biggest sources of support for Unrwa — illustrating how quickly states are willing to act on unproven allegations coming from Israel, the overall aim of which is to avoid global scrutiny of its crimes.
The persecution of Unrwa therefore demonstrated the ease with which a central pillar of the humanitarian system could be dismantled, setting the stage for what came next.
In the months that followed, Israel blocked Unrwa’s operations on the ground and passed legislation that criminalized its activities throughout historic Palestine.
The international community’s response was surprisingly weak: although some donors eventually resumed funding to Unrwa, no binding oversight mechanisms were activated, nor were any significant political costs imposed on Israel.
The persecution of Unrwa therefore demonstrated the ease with which a central pillar of the humanitarian system could be dismantled, setting the stage for what came next, when Israel launched a broader attack on international aid groups operating in Gaza.
The consequences of this last measure are devastating. For decades, organizations like these have provided essential services amid the systematic degradation of civilian infrastructure and repeated attacks on health services in Gaza. Groups such as Doctors Without Borders and Medical Aid for the Palestinians provide vital resources for emergency and trauma care, as well as other essential services to sustain Gaza’s fragile healthcare system at a time when many hospitals are damaged or out of service.
Collapse shock absorbers
The centrality of international aid groups to Gaza’s survival is itself a measure of the depth of the destruction inflicted on Palestinian society. These actors have long operated in spaces where Palestinian institutions have been dismantled and political solutions postponed.
In the absence of an end to the Israeli occupation and siege, the humanitarian presence has become one of the few remaining buffers against total collapse. In the context of an ongoing genocide and the destruction of the infrastructure necessary to sustain life in Gaza, eliminating the remaining humanitarian presence amounts to a direct attack on survival itself.
The Israeli government sought to minimize the impact of the suspensions, stating that the targeted organizations “did not bring aid to Gaza during the current ceasefire, and even in the past, their combined contribution represented only about 1% of the total volume of aid.”
But this calculation of material aid does not take into account the nature of the work and services these groups have provided, including specialized medical care, trauma surgery, rehabilitation for injured and disabled people, psychosocial and mental health services, and ongoing institutional support to keep Gaza’s collapsing health system functioning.
In 2025 alone, Doctors Without Borders performed nearly 800,000 outpatient consultations and treated more than 100,000 trauma cases in Gaza, while Medical Aid for the Palestinians made many crucial interventions, including expanding oncology care in the north of the territory.
Israel’s one percent calculation, which has not been independently verified, reduces humanitarian impact to quantitative indicators of supply rather than the ability to save lives. Presenting these organizations as marginal is not a factual assessment, but a narrative created to normalize their removal.
What emerges is a coherent strategy: first, generate dependence through sieges, destruction and institutional dismantling; then, instrumentalize this dependence by controlling or removing the means of survival.
In Gaza, where Israel has already destroyed material living conditions, the suspension of humanitarian operations completes this logic. This is not a failure of humanitarianism, but part of a broader genocidal strategy in which regulation and withdrawal of aid are used to make survival itself increasingly impossible.
Originally published by Middle East Eye on 02/01/2026
For Ghada Majadli
Ghada Majadli is a researcher and public policy analyst at Al-Shabaka. He holds a master’s degree in human rights and transitional justice from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Source: https://www.ocafezinho.com/2026/01/02/sem-a-ajuda-humanitaria-israel-intensifica-guerra-pela-sobrevivencia/
