Israel on Tuesday dismissed as “completely unfounded and detached from reality” a joint statement from a group of countries, mostly European, criticizing Israel’s revamped registration rules for NGOs operating in Gaza.
Israel instituted stricter procedures starting on Jan. 1. Groups whose primary activity is providing assistance for Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria must now submit details about their organizations, including lists of their local employees.
An association of 19 international aid organizations petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice challenging the tougher requirements. The High Court, however, rejected the petitions and upheld the new rules in a unanimous decision in late May. It gave the organizations 30 days to comply with the new security screening procedures or cease operations.
It was the High Court’s ruling that led to the joint statement by 21 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom. Australia and Japan also signed along with an E.U. commissioner.
Describing the decision as “deeply concerning,” the joint statement said, “The registration law will affect and severely limit the INGO’s [international nongovernmental organizations’] capacity to respond inside the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East-Jerusalem. We again strongly urge Israel to not implement the registration law in its current form.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry pushed back on the assertion, noting that vast quantities of humanitarian aid enter the Gaza Strip, with numerous international aid organizations distributing that assistance. Since the Oct. 10, 2025, ceasefire, more than 1.6 million tons of food have entered the Strip. An average of 600 aid trucks enter each day, it said.
The more robust oversight process for NGOs was necessary to prevent terrorist groups from exploiting humanitarian aid activities, the ministry explained, citing a recent U.S. Agency for International Development report, which identified 101 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre or were linked to Hamas.
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, tasked with leading the interministerial committee set up to review NGO applications under the new guidelines, shared with JNS that the goal is not to limit humanitarian aid, but “to protect its integrity and ensure it reaches civilians through legitimate and accountable channels.”
“The rejection of the petition sends a clear and unequivocal message: The State of Israel will not allow terrorist activity to operate under the guise of humanitarian aid,” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said in a May 20 statement praising the High Court’s decision to reject the petitions against the new rules.
Cooperation with terror groups
Israel established the stringent vetting system after the Oct. 7 attack, when major security flaws became apparent. Aid groups in Gaza were not subject to comprehensive security screening, making it easy for Hamas to turn them to its purposes.
“The need for fundamental reform became pronounced as evidence emerged of supposedly ‘neutral’ NGOs abusing the system to carry out patently non-humanitarian political advocacy, and even justifying cooperation with terror groups such as Hamas,” NGO Monitor told JNS.
It referred to its exposé of Hamas’s “guarantor” system, which implicated many of those NGOs in “irresponsible aid policies,” underscoring “the urgency of more robust vetting mechanisms.”
In December 2025, NGO Monitor exposed Hamas’s so-called “guarantor” system, its mechanism for controlling NGOs. Examining Hamas Interior Ministry documents taken from the Gaza Strip, the group found that Hamas placed operatives at senior-level positions inside every NGO. The terrorist group’s attempt to ensure control was largely successful.
“Guarantors” were local Gazans, approved by the Hamas Interior Ministry, who acted as middlemen between the terrorist group and the NGOs. Hamas required these individuals to hold positions as directors, or deputy directors, in the NGOs, ensuring Hamas had say over key decisions.
At least 10 “guarantors” were Hamas members, supporters or employed by Hamas-linked authorities, according to a December 2022 document from the Hamas Interior Ministry’s Foreign Associations Department.
NGO Monitor noted that once organizations yielded to the terrorists’ demands, they became corrupted. They began “to internalize and adopt Hamas’s own agenda and propaganda,” NGO Monitor said at the time.
“The result is an aid sector that, in many cases, no longer acts independently or impartially, but instead functions within a terror-controlled system and becomes an integral part of misinformation and disinformation campaigns,” it said.
The groups ignored evidence of Hamas terrorism, helped Hamas maintain and conceal positions for its forces, and issued public condemnations of Israel while overlooking Hamas’s systematic exploitation of humanitarian systems.
The imbalance reinforced a one-sided narrative that allowed Hamas to act with impunity, obscuring its criminal conduct and skewing international perceptions of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, NGO Monitor said.
