Doctors Without Borders has warned that it may suspend its operations in Gaza by March if Israel proceeds with a ban on international humanitarian organizations, citing staff registration requirements and security concerns.
The head of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF), Isabelle Dufourny, warned on Saturday that the organization may be forced to suspend its work in the Gaza Strip as early as March if Israel does not reverse its decision to bar its operations.
Israel confirmed on Thursday that it would enforce a ban on the activities of 37 major international humanitarian organizations in Gaza, citing their failure to submit the names of Palestinian staff members under new legislation regulating NGO registration.
MSF condemned the move as an “outrageous overreach”.
FLASHBACK: Doctors Without Borders’ @Chris_lockyear describes the “systematic obliteration” of Gaza’s health system
“Israeli forces have attacked our convoys, detained our staff, bulldozed our vehicles. Hospitals have been bombed and raided…”
“There is no health system left… https://t.co/6J3xxri9tj pic.twitter.com/Ej4WDzhXXC
— Decensored News (@decensorednews) December 31, 2025
Speaking to France Inter, Dufourny explained that humanitarian organizations are required to register the names of their employees to operate in the occupied Palestinian territories, noting that MSF’s registration expired in December 2025.
MSF currently operates in eight hospitals across Gaza, employing around 40 international staff and working alongside approximately 800 Palestinian employees. Dufourny said that a limited number of international staff had recently been able to enter the enclave in the past few days.
She highlighted the scale of MSF’s work, stating that the organization is the second-largest water distributor in Gaza and that, in 2025 alone, it treated more than 100,000 people suffering from burns and other injuries. MSF also ranks second in the number of births it assists in the territory.
Dufourny argued that the Israeli decision is linked to the role of humanitarian organizations as witnesses to Israeli military violence in Gaza. She noted that international journalists have not been permitted to enter the territory, while local journalists continue to be targeted and killed.
Since October 2023, more than 500 humanitarian workers have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, including at least 15 MSF staff members, she said.
(PC, AJA)
Mark my words, this ban on these NGOs will be added to the Genocide case against Israel. It’s all too clear a textbook illustration of the two clauses of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention: (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;. Future historians and legal scholars will cite this as proof positive that Israel was committing genocide.