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War & Peace
Critics Warn Israeli Ban on Aid Groups in Gaza 'Will Cost the Lives of Palestinians'
"Such arbitrary suspensions make an already intolerable situation worse for the people of Gaza," said the United Nations human rights chief.
Dec 31, 2025
Human rights defenders warned Wednesday that a new Israeli ban on dozens of international humanitarian groups from operating in Gaza will have a "catastrophic" impact on Palestinians already reeling from more than two years of Israel's genocidal war and siege.
The government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—announced Tuesday that 25 humanitarian groups would be suspended from operating in Gaza starting January 1 if they did not comply with new requirements including providing detailed information on their staff, funding, and operations.
Israeli authorities say, largely without evidence, that the new rules are needed because some humanitarian workers are terrorists, and because Hamas is diverting aid—a claim refuted by Israeli military officials.
By Wednesday, the number of banned groups increased to 37. Targeted groups include ActionAid, Handicap International, Doctors Without Borders sections from six European countries, two Oxfam chapters, International Rescue Committee, American Friends Service Committee, World Vision International, Norwegian Refugee Council, Mercy Corps, Defense for Children International, two Caritas branches, and CARE.
"Israel’s suspension of numerous aid agencies from Gaza is outrageous," United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said Wednesday in Geneva. "This is the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access, including Israel’s ban on UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, as well as attacks on Israeli and Palestinian NGOs amid broader access issues faced by the UN and other humanitarians."
"I urge all states, in particular those with influence, to take urgent steps and insist that Israel immediately allows aid to get into Gaza unhindered," Türk continued. "Such arbitrary suspensions make an already intolerable situation even worse for the people of Gaza."
"I remind the Israeli authorities of their obligation under international law to ensure the essential supplies of daily life in Gaza, including by allowing and facilitating humanitarian relief," he added.
European Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness, and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib said Wednesday that Israel's move "means blocking life-saving aid."
"The [European Union] has been clear: The NGO registration law can not be implemented in its current form," Lahbib added. "All barriers to humanitarian access must be lifted."
British Member of Parliament Andrew Pakes (Labour-Peterborough) said on social media that "the Israeli government banning desperately needed aid from Gaza is not a sign of a working ceasefire."
"This, at a time of extreme weather and lack of shelter," he added. "We need accountability more than ever. And immediate help to save lives."
Doctors Without Borders—which also goes by its French acronym, MSF—told Reuters Tuesday that "if MSF is prevented from working in Gaza, it will deprive hundreds of thousands of people from accessing medical care."
Norwegian Refugee Council spokesperson Shaina Low said, "At a time when needs in Gaza far exceed the available aid and services, Israel has and will continue to block life-saving aid from entering."
British emergency physician Dr. James Smith—a health activist with Medact and the People's Health Movement and member of the Global Sumud Flotilla—told Al Jazeera Wednesday that many of the proscribed groups "have been working in Gaza for decades."
Smith noted that Doctors Without Borders this year "managed more than 22,000 operations," adding that "if international NGOs were de-registered, then approximately a third of healthcare facilities" in Gaza "would be forced to immediately close."
This, after Gaza's healthcare infrastructure has been systematically obliterated by Israel's assault and siege.
"It's going to be catastrophic," warned Smith. "A situation that is already horrific will be made more horrific. The changes will be immediate, and they will be ruthless."
Smith called the aid group ban "an extension of Israel's longstanding strategy of titrating humanitarian access and humanitarian services as a core pillar of the occupation and of the genocide."
Since 2007, Israel has maintained a blockade of Gaza, severely limiting the entry and exit of people and goods into the Palestinian exclave. The blockade was tightened even further when Israel imposed a "complete siege" on the strip following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
According to UN data, Israeli forces have killed at least 579 aid workers—including nearly 400 UNRWA staffers—since October 2023. Israeli bombs and bullets have also killed over 1,700 health and medical workers, upward of 140 civil defense personnel, and more than 250 journalists.
Overall, Israel's war and siege have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza, and most Gazans forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
In recent weeks, more than a dozen Palestinians, including numerous children and infants, have died of hypothermia.
On Tuesday, Red Crescent Society in Gaza warned of a growing outbreak of hepatitis A and gastroenteritis caused by contaminated drinking water.
The International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa—last year issued a provisional ruling ordering Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and affirming an earlier order to prevent genocidal acts. Israel has been accused of ignoring these and other ICJ orders.
Responding to the Israeli ban, Refugees International vice president for programs and policy Hardin Lang said in a statement Tuesday that "this action will cost the lives of Palestinians."
"Gaza is in the heart of winter, with hundreds of thousands of people living in makeshift shelters, damaged buildings, or the open air after repeated displacement," Lang noted. "Removing these humanitarian organizations now will deepen exposure, illness, and preventable deaths. The targeted organizations provide much of the core relief capacity in Gaza, particularly on healthcare services."
"The suspension is not motivated by a sincere desire to prevent diversion of aid; it is a pretext to further restrict aid to Gaza while silencing independent aid organizations," he continued. "The Israeli government’s broad claims about systemic aid diversion have never been backed up with credible evidence—as even senior US government officials have publicly acknowledged."
"Under US and international law, parties to a conflict must allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of impartial humanitarian relief," Lang added.
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UN Describes 'Crime Scene' in el-Fasher, Sudan After Gaining Access to War-Torn City
UN officials said they were "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained."
Dec 30, 2025
After weeks of pushing for access to el-Fasher, the city in Sudan's Darfur region that was taken over by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in October, United Nations officials reported on Tuesday that their recent visit to the city showed evidence of a "crime scene," with the few people remaining there showing signs of trauma from the mass atrocities they suffered and witnessed.
UN humanitarian workers gained access to the city last Friday, two months after the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lost control of el-Fasher to the United Arab Emirates-backed RSF.
The city was the SAF's last major stronghold in Darfur, and fighting has now escalated in the Kordofan region.
Reuters reported that the RSF has attempted to portray el-Fasher as "back to normal" since its takeover, even as the Yale Humanitan Research Lab published a report earlier this month on the mass killings that the paramilitary group have sought hide evidence of "through burial, burning, and removal of human remains on a mass scale."
Denise Brown, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, told Reuters that the few people remaining in el-Fasher are living in empty buildings or tents made of plastic sheets. A small market was operating, but was selling only locally grown vegetables.
"The town was not teeming with people," Brown said. "There were very few people that [we] were able to see... We have photos of people, and you can see clearly on their faces the accumulation of fatigue, of stress, of anxiety, of loss."
Healthcare staff were seen at Saudi Hospital in el-Fasher, where 460 people were killed in an RSF attack, but they were working without medical supplies, Brown said.
Yale's report earlier this month relied partially in satellite imagery taken between October 26-November 28, which showed clusters of what researchers said were consistent with human remains in and around el-Fasher. More than 70% of the clusters had become smaller in satellite images by late November, and 38% were no longer visible.
The researchers said the RSF has used particular patterns of killing, including murdering people as they flee attacks, door-to-door and execution-style killings, and mass killings at detention centers and military installations.
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, said the UN's discovery of few signs of life in el-Fasher corroborated the lab's findings.
Brown said the UN team is "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained," and told Reuters the officials plan to return to assess water and sanitation access.
About 100,000 people fled el-Fasher in October, and about three-quarters of those forced to leave the city were already internally displaced people who had fled violence as many as three or more times. In total 1.17 million el-Fasher residents have been displaced.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), released a short documentary detailing the experiences of people who left the city and are sheltering in Chad.
"They call it Paris, and now it is destroyed," a man named Noor told MSF of el-Fasher. "In the past it was a good city with all its lights on."
An estimated 30.4 Sudanese people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, and on Monday the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported unprecedented levels of child malnutrition in the Um Baru locality in northern Darfur.
More than half of children there are suffering from acute malnutrition, and 1 in 6 are severely, acutely malnourished—a condition that could kill them within weeks if left untreated.
“When severe acute malnutrition reaches this level, time becomes the most critical factor,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Children in Um Baru are fighting for their lives and need immediate help. Every day without safe and unhindered access increases the risk of children growing weaker and more death and suffering from causes that are entirely preventable.”
Many of the families observed by UNICEF fled el-Fasher in recent weeks.
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Many in Gaza to 'Lose Access to Critical Medical Care' as Israel Suspends Doctors Without Borders
"The humanitarian response in Gaza is already highly restricted, and cannot afford further dismantlement," the renowned organization warned.
Dec 30, 2025
The Israeli government said Tuesday that Doctors Without Borders, one of the largest medical organizations currently operating in Gaza, is among the 25 humanitarian groups that will be suspended at the start of the new year for their alleged failure to comply with Israel's widely criticized new registration rules for international NGOs.
According to the Associated Press, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs "said the organizations that will be banned on January 1 did not meet new requirements for sharing staff, funding, and operations information." The Israeli government specifically accused Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), of "failing to clarify the roles of some staff that Israel accused of cooperation with Hamas and other militant groups," AP reported.
In addition to providing medical assistance to desperate Palestinians, MSF has been an outspoken critic of what has it described as Israel's "campaign of total destruction" in Gaza. The group said in a report released last December that its teams' experiences on the ground in Gaza were "consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place."
Ahead of Tuesday's announcement, Doctors Without Borders warned that the looming withdrawal of registration from international NGOs "would prevent organizations, including MSF, from providing essential services to people in Gaza and the West Bank."
"With Gaza’s health system already destroyed, the loss of independent and experienced humanitarian organizations’ access to respond would be a disaster for Palestinians," the group said in a statement last week. "The humanitarian response in Gaza is already highly restricted, and cannot afford further dismantlement."
"If Israeli authorities revoke MSF’s access to Gaza in 2026, a large portion of people in Gaza will lose access to critical medical care, water, and lifesaving support," the group added. "MSF’s activities serve nearly half a million people in Gaza through our vital support to the destroyed health system. MSF continues to seek constructive engagement with Israeli authorities to continue its activities."
Pascale Coissard, MSF's emergency coordinator for Gaza, noted that "in the last year, MSF teams have treated hundreds of thousands of patients and delivered hundreds of millions of liters of water."
"MSF teams are trying to expand activities and support Gaza’s shattered health system," said Coissard. "In 2025 alone, we carried out almost 800,000 outpatient consultations and handled more than 100,000 trauma cases."
Israel's announcement came shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump in Florida, where both dodged questions about their supposed "peace plan" for Gaza after more than two years of relentless bombing. The Israeli military has been accused of violating an existing ceasefire agreement hundreds of times since it took effect in October.
Al Jazeera reported Tuesday that "Israeli forces have carried out strikes across the Gaza Strip as they continue with their near-daily violations of the ceasefire agreement, with Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged enclave continuing apace and displaced Palestinians enduring the destruction of their few remaining possessions in flooding brought about by heavy winter rains."
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'This Is an Act of War': CIA Carried Out Drone Strike on Port Facility Inside Venezuela
One expert called the reported drone strike a "violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution."
Dec 30, 2025
The US Central Intelligence Agency reportedly carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility inside Venezuela, marking the first time the Trump administration launched an attack within the South American country amid a broader military campaign that observers fear could lead to war.
CNN on Monday was first to report the details of the CIA drone strike, days after President Donald Trump suggested in a radio interview that the US recently took out a "big facility" in Venezuela, prompting confusion and alarm. Trump authorized covert CIA action against Venezuela in October.
According to CNN, which cited unnamed sources, the drone strike "targeted a remote dock on the Venezuelan coast that the US government believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for onward shipping."
To date, the Trump administration has not provided any evidence to support its claim that boats it has illegally bombed in international waters were involved in drug trafficking. No casualties were reported from the drone strike, and the Venezuelan government has not publicly commented on the attack.
"This is an act of war and illegal under both US and international law, let’s just be clear about that," journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in response to news of the drone strike.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser with the US Program at the International Crisis Group, called the reported drone attack a "violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution."
"Seemingly conducted as covert action and then casually disclosed by POTUS while calling into a radio show," he added.
CNN's reporting, later corroborated by the New York Times, came after the Trump administration launched its 30th strike on a vessel in international waters, bringing the death toll from the lawless military campaign to at least 107.
The Times reported late Monday that "it is not clear" if the drone used in last week's mission "was owned by the CIA or borrowed from the US military."
"The Pentagon has stationed several MQ-9 Reaper drones, which carry Hellfire missiles, at bases in Puerto Rico as part of the pressure campaign," the Times added.
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