Banning Aid Groups from Gaza is Genocide by Other Means
Israel’s new ban on dozens of aid organisations in Gaza has severed a vital humanitarian lifeline and access to international solidarity. It is the latest stage in the attempted annihilation of life.
By Huda Skaik in Gaza City
Israel’s decision to bar 37 international humanitarian organisations from operating in the occupied Palestinian territory from the beginning of this month did not come as a shock to those of us living in Gaza. It was merely confirmation that the Netanyahu government is intent on continuing its genocidal policies by other means. It also confirmed that this genocide has never been just about bombs and tanks. In reality, it is about systematically dismantling every structure that allows Palestinians to survive, endure, and bear witness to what is being inflicted on them.
Israel revoked the operating licences of the aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council, for failing to comply with new government regulations. The new rules require international NGOs working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to provide extremely detailed information on staff members, funding, and operations. The aid organisations have responded by saying that they conduct all the due diligence required. Some have added that these new rules passed by the Israeli Knesset go further than in any other countries in which they operate.
During nearly two years of genocide, Gaza has been turned into a laboratory of engineered deprivation. Hospitals have been destroyed, water infrastructure dismantled, bakeries shut down, and borders sealed. Aid convoys have been obstructed, delayed, and attacked. Nearly everyone in Gaza has been displaced at least once, and many multiple times. Now, Israel seeks to institutionalise this violence by criminalising humanitarian work itself, under the pretext of new “regulatory” requirements imposed by an occupying power on an occupied population. Another totally illegal move.
From Gaza, this decision reads as another example of collective punishment. International organisations have been among the last remaining lifelines for a population deliberately pushed to the brink by famine, disease and psychological torture. Aid agencies have provided food in markets (although people often cannot afford to buy it), and they have provided medicine in hospitals stripped of electricity and anaesthesia. They have often been a lifeline for us.
Witnesses
Another important element of their role is that aid workers are often the ones who hear our stories because journalists are not allowed to enter. With borders sealed and communication networks often collapsing, they are the “outsiders” we are allowed to speak to. Expelling these organisations and aid workers is a deliberate act that will deepen a humanitarian catastrophe engineered by Israel itself and increase our isolation. International media have also reported that some materials normally provided by aid agencies will now be released by Israel. This is a part of Israel’s plan to use aid to allow certain favoured armed groups to gain leverage.
The timing is also telling. As international scrutiny intensifies and evidence of war crimes continues to mount, Israel is tightening control over witnesses. Aid organisations do more than deliver relief: they document violations, count civilians killed, record testimonies, and challenge official narratives. Silencing them is part of a broader effort to control the narrative of Gaza. Israel wants to control who speaks, who is believed, and whose suffering is rendered invisible.
Having lived through siege, starvation, displacement and repeated ceasefire violations, I have seen how aid is already treated as conditional and expendable rather than a right. One example is that supplies enter Gaza, but there are no longer the professionals needed to use them because doctors have been killed or abducted. Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, a leading paediatrician at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, was unlawfully abducted by Israeli forces on 27 December 2024 and remains in an Israeli prison. Aid workers themselves have been targeted and buried beneath the same rubble as those they were trying to save. At least 562 aid workers, including 376 UN staff, have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023.
The latest ban is the logical extension of that violence: if you cannot fully destroy life, you turn to suffocating it slowly. If you cannot kill them all, you will make living impossible.
Another layer of death
Israel’s claim of “regulating” international organisations cannot be separated from its long history of restricting Palestinian civil society. These regulations are not neutral safeguards: they are political filters designed to ensure that only compliant, Israel-controlled aid is allowed. This kind of aid feeds bodies while ignoring the cause of the hunger - and treats genocide as a natural disaster rather than a deliberate crime. In the face of mass killing, this neutrality is a form of complicity.
What does it mean to ban aid in a place where more than 80% of the population depends on humanitarian assistance to survive? It means weaponising hunger. It means turning winter into a death sentence for families living in tents. It means telling mothers that formula exists, but not for their children. It means telling the wounded that treatment exists, but not for their injuries. It is an extension of the siege by administrative decree.
From Gaza, the message is clear: banning aid organisations will not bring security, peace or stability. It will just add another layer of death to an already-devastated territory. It also exposes, yet again, the moral collapse of an international system that allows an occupying power to decide who may eat, heal, or live.
The question facing the international community is no longer whether Israel is “going too far” – that line was crossed long ago. Now the real question is whether the world will accept a new norm: one where an occupying power is allowed to starve, bomb and systematically suffocate an entire population into submission without accountability.
Because if the world allows Israel to ban aid organisations with no consequences, it is not just turning its back on Gaza – it is turning its back on the very principle that human life is worth protecting, regardless of who holds the power. History will remember who starved Gaza – and who stood by while humanitarianism was outlawed and extinguished.
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Huda Skaik is an English literature student and a journalistic writer from Gaza. She is a member of We Are Not Numbers, and she is also a contributor for The New Arab, Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye and WRMEA. She has a strong interest in reporting and writing.
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I think your question has already been answered. All but a couple of western nations are not only prepared to allow genocide, they are prepared to participate. My country, Canada, is but one disgraceful, unforgivable example.
israel may believe it is getting away with genocide but the reverse is true. There are more people in the world who see israeli actions clearly and hate every moment it continues than those who have been bought and paid for. Being aligned with this land theft and genocide will be the undoing of all complicits in the end. Free Palestine from their vile colonisers 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸