Israel is obstructing aid deliveries to Gaza using a controversial new registration system for international NGOs, humanitarian groups have warned, leaving tens of millions of dollars of aid stranded outside the Palestinian enclave.
Israel introduced new rules – billed as an effort to fight “delegitimisation” of the country – in March, giving aid groups working with Palestinians in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank until the end of the year to re-register with authorities or risk losing their authorisation to operate.
Aid groups have criticised the rules, which include a requirement to provide full lists of Palestinian staff, as an attempt to force international NGOs out of Gaza. They also accuse Israel of using the re-registration process to hold up aid shipments, even as the international community tries to step up deliveries following the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
NGOs refusing to comply with all new rules – which they say would breach European Union data-protection laws – say their deliveries are regularly being denied. The rules also allow Israel to ban groups with employees who have called for a boycott of the country in the past seven years.
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“We’re now in a stalemate,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), explaining that when his group asks to bring in aid, authorities say: “Your registration is under review, you cannot bring aid in, you’re not approved to bring in aid supplies.”
The ceasefire deal required at least 600 trucks – from aid groups, governments and the private sector – to enter Gaza each day. According to UN data, about 100 trucks a day from the United Nations and its partners offloaded deliveries in Gaza between October 10th and 29th.
The UN data does not include trucks with goods sent directly by governments or the private sector. But aid officials say the amount of aid entering is still too low, and NGOs complain that multiple deliveries are being blocked under the new registration system.
Forty international NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, People in Need and NRC, said last week that Israel had denied 99 requests to deliver aid to Gaza in the first 12 days of the ceasefire. NRC said all its requests had been denied.
Three-quarters of the refusals came on the grounds that the organisations – some of which have operated in Gaza for years – were “not authorised” to deliver aid to the enclave, the groups said.
As of last week, essential goods worth almost $50 million – including food, medical supplies, hygiene items and shelter materials – were waiting at crossings and in warehouses, the groups added.
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On top of EU data-protection issues, groups say they are concerned about how Israel would try to use the information about Palestinian staff.
“I’m not going to hand over the names of our colleagues ... to a party to the conflict that has killed over 500” humanitarian workers, said Bushra Khalidi, from Oxfam.
Cogat, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows to Gaza, said the new system, including the demand for lists of staff operating in the enclave, was part of an effort to stop Hamas infiltrating the aid system. Cogat said groups that had re-registered were able to send shipments.
“The alleged delays ... occur only when organisations choose not to meet the security requirements established to prevent Hamas’s involvement,” it said.
Ms Khalidi said the requirement for staff details “replaces principled humanitarian co-ordination with political vetting”. “[The new system] is about control and, by design, it’s pushing out both international and Palestinian-led organisations,” she said.
The Israeli military attacked the Gaza Strip for a fourth day on Friday, killing three people, Palestinian health authorities said, in another test of the fragile ceasefire agreement.
Residents reported Israeli shelling and gunfire in northern Gaza, as Israel continued to bombard areas of the enclave despite saying that it remains committed to the ceasefire.
The Israeli military did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Another Palestinian died of wounds sustained from previous Israeli shelling, the Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.
The US-brokered ceasefire, which left thorny issues such as the disarmament of Hamas and a timeline for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip unresolved, has been tested by periodic outbreaks of violence since it came into place three weeks ago.
Between Tuesday and Wednesday, Israel retaliated for the death of an Israeli soldier with bombardments that Gaza health authorities said killed 104 people.
Gaza’s health ministry said the Red Cross had delivered to it 30 bodies of Palestinians killed by Israel during the war, a day after Hamas handed over two bodies of hostages.
Under the ceasefire accord, Hamas released all living hostages held in Gaza in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and wartime detainees, while Israel agreed to pull back its troops, halt its offensive and increase aid.
Hamas also agreed to hand over the remains of all 28 dead hostages in exchange for 360 Palestinian militants killed in the war. After Thursday’s release, it had handed over 17 bodies, while 225 Palestinian bodies have so far been returned to Gaza.
Two years of conflict in Gaza have killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities, and left the enclave in ruins. Israel launched the war after Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and bringing 251 hostages back to Gaza. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025. Additional reporting: Reuters
