Aid groups petition Israeli Supreme Court as Gaza, West Bank work ban nears

Israel has ordered 37 support groups to halt life-saving operations in war-torn Gaza, as effectively as the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Seventeen worldwide support groups mentioned they’ve petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to permit them to maintain working within the Gaza Strip and different areas within the occupied Palestinian territory, the place the Israeli authorities is ready to halt their life-saving work subsequent month.

The Israeli authorities says it would ban 37 support groups from war-torn Gaza, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem on March 1, a transfer described as having probably devastating penalties for Palestinians.

In a joint assertion on Tuesday, support groups mentioned they’ve appealed to the Supreme Court looking for an pressing suspension of the plan to ban them from working, and are looking for an pressing interim injunction from the court docket pending a full judicial assessment of the Israeli order.

Oxfam Worldwide mentioned on Tuesday that the pressured closure of support operations in Gaza and the remainder of the occupied Palestinian territory might start as early as Saturday.

“The impact could be fast, extending effectively past particular person organisations to the broader humanitarian system,” Oxfam warned.

“In Gaza, households stay depending on exterior help amid persevering with restrictions on support entry and renewed strikes in densely populated areas,” it mentioned in an announcement.

“Within the West Bank, together with East Jerusalem, navy incursions, demolitions, displacement, settlement enlargement and settler violence are driving rising humanitarian wants,” it added.

The court docket motion comes as support organisations – together with Medical doctors With out Borders, recognized by its French initials MSF, Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE – have been notified by Israeli authorities on December 30, 2025, that their Israeli work registrations had expired and that that they had 60 days to resume them and supply lists containing private particulars on their Palestinian employees.

In the event that they fail to offer data on their Palestinian employees, the organisations must stop operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, together with occupied East Jerusalem, from March 1.

The organisations say compliance with the Israeli orders would expose their Palestinian employees to potential retaliation, undermine the precept of humanitarian neutrality and violate European information safety legislation.

“Turning humanitarian organisations into an information-gathering arm for a celebration to the battle stands in complete contradiction to the precept of neutrality,” the court docket petition states.

In accordance with the United Nations, 133 NGO employees have been killed in Israeli assaults within the Gaza Strip since Israel’s genocidal battle on Gaza started on October 7, 2023, together with 15 MSF employees.

Of their joint assertion, the help businesses mentioned that stopping their actions will result in a “humanitarian collapse and irreparable hurt” for a whole lot of hundreds of individuals in want.

The overwhelming majority of Gaza’s greater than 2 million residents depend on support groups for meals, water, healthcare, shelter and different necessities after Israel’s greater than two-year battle destroyed a lot of the territory.

The petitioners say they’ve proposed sensible alternate options to handing over employees lists to Israeli authorities, together with “donor-audited vetting methods”.