Doctors Without Borders: Israeli Ban Threatens to Halt Our Activities in Gaza

The head of "Doctors Without Borders," Isabelle Defourny, warned on Saturday that the organization may end its operations in the Gaza Strip by next March if Israel does not reverse its decision to ban its activities, along with those of 36 other organizations.

Israel confirmed on Thursday that it "will implement the ban" on the activities of 37 major international humanitarian organizations in the Gaza Strip because they did not provide it with lists of names of their Palestinian employees in accordance with a new legislation.

"Doctors Without Borders" described this decision as a "flagrant violation."

Defourny said that "to work in the occupied Palestinian territories, the names of employees must be registered, and this registration expired in December 2025."

"Doctors Without Borders" includes about 40 international staff in the Gaza Strip and collaborates with 800 Palestinian employees in 8 hospitals.

Defourny said, "We still have international staff who were able to enter Gaza recently in the past few days."

She added, "We are the second largest distributor of water in the Gaza Strip; in 2025, we treated slightly more than 100,000 people with burns or various injuries, and we rank second in terms of the number of births we conduct."

Defourny considered the Israeli decision to stem from the fact that non-governmental organizations "witness the violence committed by the Israeli army" in Gaza.

She added, "International journalists have never been allowed to enter Gaza, while the Israeli army targets local journalists and kills them."

She pointed out that "more than 500 humanitarian workers have been killed—including 15 members of Doctors Without Borders—in Israeli raids since October 2023."