Shaina Low hoped to see aid trucks in Gaza in 2026. Instead, she says, millions of dollars worth of supplies will sit in warehouses while Palestinians suffer.

Low is a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), one of more than two dozen humanitarian organizations barred by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip, starting Thursday, for failing to comply with new registration rules.

Israel says the rules are aimed at preventing Hamas and other militant groups from infiltrating aid organizations. But banned organizations say the rules will have dire consequences for a region that already exists faced with deadly floods while trying to rebuild just a few months in a fragile ceasefire.

“What’s so frustrating for us as aid workers is knowing that we have resources available out there, and yes we just can’t reach people with what we have because Israel has continuously, for over two years, blocked us from bringing in our supplies, blocked us from increasing, prevented us from reaching communities in need, Low said As it happens guest host Paul Hunter.

“And so we see this news with the registration as just another element of that obstruction.”

Controversial new registration rules

Israel announced new rules earlier this year requiring humanitarian organizations to register the names of their workers and provide details of their funding and operations in order to continue working in Gaza.

Israel’s Diaspora Ministry said more than 30 groups – about 15 percent of organizations operating in Gaza – did not comply and would be suspended.

These include Médecins Sans Frontières, World Vision International and several Oxfam regional branches, including Oxfam Quebec.

“The message is clear: humanitarian aid is welcome – exploiting humanitarian frameworks for terrorism is not,” said Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli.

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Asked why the NRC simply won’t give Israel the information it wants, Low says it’s not that simple.

Providing a list of names would violate privacy rules in several European countries where the organization operates, she says. Moreover, she says it would endanger NRC workers.

“Israel is a party to the conflict. And not only are they a party to the conflict, but they have killed hundreds of aid workers in Gaza,” she said. “So it’s a risk for us to give them the names of our employees.”

The United Nations reported this in October at least 562 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

“There has been no evidence that the NRC or any of these other organizations have links with armed groups,” she said.

“We see this as just part of the campaign to delegitimize legitimate humanitarian actors who have been operating in the occupied Palestinian territory for decades.”

While announcing the bans, Israel singled out Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), accusing the charity of failing to respond to Israeli claims that some of its workers are linked to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

“MSF would never knowingly employ people involved in military activities,” the statement said.

MSF says Israel’s decision will have a catastrophic effect on its work in Gaza, where it supports about 20 percent of hospital beds and a third of births.

The new regulations also include ideological requirements, including the disqualification of organizations that have called for a boycott of Israel, denied Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, or expressed support for any international legal proceedings against Israeli soldiers or leaders.

What does the ban really mean?

The decision not to renew the aid groups’ licenses means that offices in Israel and East Jerusalem will close, and the organizations will not be able to send international staff or aid to Gaza.

But several groups, including the NCR, said they would continue to run programs inside Gaza with local staff.

Israel’s defense body that oversees humanitarian aid to Gaza, COGAT, said the organizations on the list contribute less than one percent of all aid going to the Gaza Strip, and that aid will continue to come from more than 20 organizations that have received permits to continue operating.

But affected groups say the timing of the ban, in the middle of Gaza’s flood-prone winter, will have deadly consequences.

“We have hundreds of thousands of people living in overcrowded displacement sites where there are open sewers, where garbage and solid waste is piling up, and the floodwater has nowhere to go but into people’s tents,” Low said.

According to the United Nations, 1.9 million people – 90 percent of the population – have been displaced in Gaza in the past two years.

Since January, Israel has also banned the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the lead UN agency working with the Palestinians, accusing it of being infiltrated by Hamas. The UN denies this.

On Tuesday, Canada released a joint statement with several other countries criticizing Israel’s “new restrictive demands” and urging the country to allow non-governmental organizations and UN partners to operate in Gaza.

“(We) express serious concern over the further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains catastrophic,” reads the statement from the foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Low says it is time for the international community to do “more than just issue statements of condemnation”.

“As an occupying power, Israel has an obligation to provide the basic needs of the people living under its control or to provide humanitarian aid,” she said.

“What we’ve seen over and over again over the last two years is that Israel is not living up to those obligations, and yet we’ve seen very little action by states to hold them accountable for those violations.”