Doctors Without Borders suspended “non-critical” medical services at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the southern Gaza Strip, citing concerns regarding safeguarding its neutrality after Palestinian terrorists were spotted operating from the medical center, Reuters reported on Saturday.
The Geneva-based NGO also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that its operations at Gaza’s largest functioning hospital were suspended on Jan. 20 after the NGO voiced concerns regarding the “management of the structure, the safeguarding of its neutrality, and security breaches.”
“MSF formally expressed our strong concern to the relevant authorities,” meaning the Hamas terrorist group, after “armed men, some masked” were seen inside the compound by the NGO’s staff and patients.
Since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, MSF teams have reported “a pattern of unacceptable acts,” including “the presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients and a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons,” the group stated.
It called on “all armed groups, as well as Israeli forces to respect medical facilities and ensure the protection of staff and patients.”
“MSF’s admission that Hamas military presence in hospitals threatens their humanitarian work is acutely overdue,” the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor group said in a statement on Saturday, urging all humanitarian groups “to address this profound danger, and to no longer turn a blind eye to this terror arrogation of vital medical infrastructure.
“For years, it has been clear that Hamas uses hospitals as military bases. NGO Monitor warned about this in Sept. 2025, after publishing internal Hamas documents where the terror group admits to using medical facilities as shields for military personnel and operations,” NGO Monitor said.
“MSF and other NGOs long chose to ignore this war crime, and instead lambasted Israel for anti-terror operations targeting Hamas infrastructure in and around medical facilities,” it added.
The Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit stated, “After too long, MSF has finally admitted what Israel has been saying all along: Hamas abuses Nasser Hospital as a terror base.
“The obvious question is: Where was MSF until now?” it asked. “If MSF now acknowledges Hamas’s deep presence in a hospital they work in, why has it repeatedly refused basic transparency—such as submitting staff lists—to ensure its organization has not been infiltrated by Hamas operatives?
“This is not accountability; it is a late admission after years of choosing to stay in the dark, during which Hamas systematically exploited humanitarian infrastructure,” the statement concluded.
On Oct. 10, 2025, the Israel Defense Forces withdrew to the ceasefire-instituted Yellow Line, leaving Nasser Hospital in the area where Hamas terrorists have been trying to reassert their control.
Under U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan for Gaza, Hamas committed to disarming and ceding control to a transitional civilian governing body. It has since backtracked on those pledges.
In February 2024, in response to a question concerning its relationship with terrorist organizations, Doctors Without Borders admitted that it continued to work with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which it called “the governing authority responsible for health care.”
On Jan. 2, 2026, Israel’s Foreign Ministry presented evidence alleging that some Doctors Without Borders officials were simultaneously members of Palestinian terrorist groups operating in the Strip.
Fadi al-Wadiya was employed by the humanitarian group while serving as a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist, the ministry said, sharing a picture of him in military fatigues. He was responsible for furthering the Iranian-controlled terrorist organization’s rocket capabilities, the ministry added.
Meanwhile, Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif al-Shalfouh worked for MSF while at the same time serving as a Hamas sniper during terrorist “combat and operational activity,” according to the Foreign Ministry statement.
The revelations came as Israel began enforcing a new regulations for NGOs working in Gaza, suspending licenses of groups that “failed to meet required security and transparency standards,” including MSF.
The move followed findings that employees of several NGOs operating primarily with the Palestinian population were involved in terrorist activity, according to an interministerial review process led by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
After Jerusalem ordered MSF out of the Gaza Strip by Feb. 28, the group announced it would, “as an exceptional measure,” share with Israel “a defined list of Palestinian staff and international staff names.”
MSF made the decision “solely with the aim of being able to continue providing critical medical care,” the group said in a Jan. 24 statement.
