Seventeen international aid groups have petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice to block an imminent order forcing dozens of nonprofits to cease operations in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, warning of catastrophic consequences for Palestinians.

The licenses of 37 nonprofits, including some of the petitioning groups, expired on January 1. The organizations were given 60 days to wind down their operations before a March 1 deadline.

The Diaspora Affairs Ministry, which oversees the licensing, said the groups did not comply with stringent new requirements to register with the government. The ministry demanded that the groups file a raft of documentation about their organizations and operations, including a list of all foreign and Palestinian employees, as well as those workers’ passports and personal identification numbers.

Now, the petitioning organizations are asking the court to halt the ban until a final ruling, they said in a joint statement Tuesday. The government has until Wednesday afternoon to respond, according to a court document.

According to the petitioners, ceasing the nonprofits’ operations “will lead to a humanitarian collapse and irreparable harm to the right to life and health of hundreds of thousands of individuals in need.”

The list of 37 groups includes multiple branches of Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam, the Danish and Norwegian Refugee Councils, Caritas Internationalis, an umbrella for Catholic charities, the Quaker-founded American Friends Service Committee and the International Rescue Committee.

The Defense Ministry has said the expiration of the licenses will not affect aid provision in Gaza. The Diaspora Ministry described the new rules, instituted last March, as a safety measure meant to weed out NGO workers with ties to terror groups.

But the NGOs say compliance would expose local employees to potential retaliation, undermine the principle of humanitarian neutrality and violate European data protection law.

“Turning humanitarian organizations into an information-gathering arm for a party to the conflict stands in total contradiction to the principle of neutrality,” the petition states.

The petitioners say they have proposed practical alternatives to handing over staff lists to Israel, including “independent sanctions screening” and “donor-audited vetting systems.”

They also argue that the registration requirements violate Israel’s obligations under international law. And they claim that the government body overseeing the registration process delayed responding to registration requests by the organizations in question “for many months while creating a false representation that the applications were under review.”

Then, the petition says, the team announced at the end of 2025 that the registrations would expire because the groups failed to comply with the new regulations.

The vast majority of Gaza’s 2 million residents rely on aid groups for food, water, health care, shelter and other essentials after the two-year war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel destroyed much of the Strip. Hundreds of thousands are living in tents, and reconstruction has yet to begin following a shaky ceasefire agreement reached in October.

The banned organizations say that they collectively support or implement more than half of all food assistance in Gaza, 60 percent of field hospital operations, and all inpatient treatment for children suffering severe acute malnutrition.

Audrey Rayburn, director of AIDA, an umbrella organization of international NGOs working in the West Bank and Gaza, told reporters on Tuesday that NGO presence in Gaza, where foreign media is not allowed, also allows outsiders to witness the war.

COGAT, the Defense Ministry agency overseeing civilian affairs in Gaza, has said that the organizations whose licenses are to be revoked contribute less than 1% of the total aid going into the territory. More than 20 organizations will continue to operate after complying with the new regulations, it said.

COGAT has previously asserted that the registration process is designed “to prevent the exploitation of aid by Hamas,” which it says has worked under the cover of international aid organizations for “the diversion of aid, the use of local employees for terrorist purposes, and the transfer of funds from terror-linked sources.”

Last year, Israel imposed a ban, as well as other measures, limiting the operations of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and the largest aid provider in Gaza. Israel accused UNRWA employees of participating in the October 7 attack and said the group has allowed itself to be infiltrated by Hamas, allegations the agency denies.

The petitioners say enforcement has already begun in practice, with supplies blocked and visas denied to foreign staff.

“We haven’t been able to get international staff inside Gaza since the beginning of January. Israeli authorities denied any entry to Gaza, but also to the West Bank,” Filipe Ribeiro, the local head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, told AFP last week.

“For the time being, we are still working in Gaza, and we plan to keep running our operations as long as we can,” he added.

MSF is the largest provider of medical supplies after UN agencies and the Red Cross. The group said it hasn’t been able to bring in any supplies — including antibiotics, pain medication, anesthetics and wound dressings — since the start of January, shortly after the ban was announced.

The absence of coordination with Israel complicates operations by denying entry to Israel, the West Bank or Gaza to foreign aid workers or by denying direct contact to plan around Israeli military operations in the territories.

“We are arguing that Israel acted here without any authority, because according to the Oslo Accords, the whole registration of organizations issue was handled by the Palestinian Authority,” Yotam Ben-Hillel, an Israeli attorney who filed the appeal for the international organizations, told reporters, referring to the 1990s-era agreement that set terms for the West Bank’s governance.

The NGOs argued in their petition that Israel “must facilitate relief for civilians under its control” under the Geneva Convention.

“This is a new era in how Israel deals with international nonprofits”, Ben-Hillel said.

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UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency

Doctors Without Borders

High Court of Justice

2023-2025 Israel-Hamas war

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