Israel orders Doctors without Borders out of Gaza after broken pledge

Israel announced on Monday that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, must cease its activities in the Gaza Strip and leave by Feb. 28 after failing to hand over a list of its local and international staff for security purposes.

On Dec. 30, 2025, Israel suspended 37 NGOs that failed to meet stricter requirements announced last March by a new inter-ministerial committee set up to handle the registration and supervision of international organizations operating in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. (It approved 24 groups, which it said account for 99% of total aid to the Strip.)

“Humanitarian aid—yes. Security blindness—no,” said Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli in a statement provided to JNS on Sunday. The Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry leads the inter-ministerial committee.

“Unfortunately, [Médecins Sans Frontières] is once again showing a lack of transparency. … The organization changed its position abruptly, after publicly pledging to act in accordance with the regulations,” said Chikli.

Among the new regulations, groups are required to submit a list of all employees. “The list shall include full names, passport numbers (for foreign employees), identification numbers (for Palestinian employees), and contact details,” according to the guidelines published on the Israeli government’s website on March 9, 2025.

At first, MSF refused to comply. Then, faced with the end of its activities in Gaza, it agreed to the new requirements on Jan. 23, and promised to transfer a list of its staff by Jan. 27. That date came and went without a list being provided.

The group then backtracked, announcing in a Jan. 30 statement that it would not provide a personnel list “in the absence of securing assurances to ensure the safety of our staff or the independent management of our operations.”

“In practice, despite the public commitment, the organization refrained from transferring the lists …, contrary to its previous statements and the binding procedure,” said the Diaspora Affairs Ministry. “In light of this and in accordance with the provisions of the procedure, by Feb. 28, 2026, MSF will cease its activities and leave the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.”

The ministry stressed that the regulation is intended to enable legitimate humanitarian activity while preventing “the exploitation of humanitarian cover for hostile purposes and terrorist activity.”

This is particularly relevant to Médecins Sans Frontières, which has employed terrorists in the past.

“We have at least two documented cases of MSF activists that were directly involved in terrorism, Hamas organizations and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” said Chikli.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry tweeted a video of those terrorists on Sunday, noting MSF had “publicly mourned” an employee, Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif al-Shalfouh, who was a “confirmed Hamas terrorist.” It also employed Fadi al-Wadiya, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist, the ministry said.

Chikli noted that MSF coordinates with the Gazan Ministry of Health, run by Hamas, and the NGO’s statements are published in tandem with similar statements from Hamas sources in the Strip.

This pattern repeated itself with MSF’s announcement that it would not share its staff lists. COGAT, the Israel Defense Ministry’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories unit, tweeted on Sunday:

“Interestingly, on the same day that MSF announced they will not be sharing the lists of local employees after all, Hamas released a statement calling for organizations to not share local employee information lists. Coincidence?”

Although it defines itself as an “international, independent, medical humanitarian organization,” MSF is highly controversial. Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor reported that MSF “consistently abuses its status as a humanitarian organization to launch venomous anti-Israel political campaigns.”

In September 2025, two Hamas documents found by Israeli forces in Gaza showed that Doctors without Borders (along with the International Committee of the Red Cross) were aware of the presence of Hamas in the Gaza Strip’s medical facilities despite obfuscating or outright denying it publicly.

At the same time that MSF ignored Hamas’s use of homes, schools and medical facilities for terrorist attacks, the group accused Israel of “genocide,” “collective punishment,” “apartheid,” “indiscriminate bombings” and “wholesale massacres,” NGO Monitor reported.

In December 2023, former MSF Secretary General Alain Destexhe said in a report that MSF’s communications show a “systematic bias in favor of Hamas and hostility to Israel,” as do its employees.

“Despite being subject to the MSF Charter, a significant proportion of its staff seem to share the Hamas point of view and support the terrorist attacks of 7 October,” said Destexhe.

Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, told JNS: “MSF has gotten away with using its massive annual budget ($2.4 billion) and the influence this buys to promote antisemitic propaganda like [accusing Israel of] genocide, and to avoid accountability for links to Hamas.

“But attempts to use bullying tactics through journalists and European political allies to avoid vital Israeli counterterror registration have failed. Their moral medical facade has been exposed for all to see,” he said.

© JNS