Key points
- 37 foreign aid groups suspended
- Guterres warns humanitarian work at risk
- Ceasefire progress threatened amid crisis
UNITED NATIONS: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged Israel to reverse its decision to ban dozens of international humanitarian organisations from operating in Gaza, warning that the move risks worsening an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement, reports AFP.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories – the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Humanitarian principles
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
