Gaza: MSF's vital humanitarian work at risk from new Israeli registration rules
Israel’s new registration rules for international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) risk leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza without life-saving healthcare in 2026, warns Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF), one of the largest medical organisations operating in Gaza today.
The new requirements threaten to withdraw registration from INGOs beginning 1 January. This non-registration would prevent organisations, including MSF, from providing essential services to people in Gaza and the West Bank.
With Gaza’s health system already destroyed, independent and experienced humanitarian organisations losing access to respond would be a disaster for Palestinians.
MSF calls on the Israeli authorities to ensure that INGOs can maintain and continue their impartial and independent response in Gaza. The already restricted humanitarian response cannot be further dismantled.
“In the last year, MSF teams have treated hundreds of thousands of patients and delivered hundreds of millions of litres of water,” says Pascale Coissard, MSF emergency coordinator for Gaza.
“MSF teams are trying to expand activities and support Gaza’s shattered health system; in 2025 alone, we carried out almost 800,000 outpatient consultations and handled more than 100,000 trauma cases, and if we obtain registration, we plan to continue strengthening our activities in 2026.”
MSF provides a vast amount of life-saving healthcare, yet even this is not enough to meet the overwhelming needs of people in Gaza.
In 2025 alone, with a budget of more than €100 million (£87.3 million), MSF teams handled over 100,000 trauma cases; managed the care for over 400 beds; performed 22,700 surgical operations on nearly 10,000 patients; carried out almost 800,000 outpatient consultations; administered 45,000 vaccinations; assisted in more than 10,000 births; provided more than 40,000 individual mental health sessions and group sessions for over 60,000 people; distributed more than 700 million litres of water and produced nearly 100 million litres of clean water.
For 2026, MSF has committed an estimated 100-120 million euros for its humanitarian response in Gaza. Many of the services provided by MSF are largely unavailable elsewhere in Gaza due to the destruction of the health system.
If MSF loses its access to Gaza in 2026, due to the Israeli authorities, a large portion of people in Gaza will lose access to critical medical care, water, and life-saving support. 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.
In Gaza, MSF is currently supporting six public hospitals and running two field hospitals. MSF also supports four general healthcare centres and runs an inpatient feeding centre for people with malnutrition. MSF has recently opened six new medical points providing wound care and other general healthcare services.
MSF has been working in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1989.
MSF and the Gaza genocide
As of December 2025, over 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including 15 MSF staff.
Palestinians in Gaza are near fully reliant on aid for basic survival. Although commercial trucks are entering the Strip, the amount of goods allowed into the Strip by Israeli authorities is far from sufficient, is deliberately blocked, and continues to keep Palestinians lives hanging by a thread.
For the past two years, our teams have seen: the deliberate targeting of medics and hospitals; the use of starvation as a weapon of war with a blockade starving people of food, water, fuel and medical supplies; the militarisation of aid, and the massacre of starving people queuing for aid.
In short, we are witnessing a genocide.