Israel has barred six medical NGOs with operations in Gaza from entering the besieged enclave, where the health-care system has collapsed, the World Health Organization said Thursday. The WHO said there was no explanation provided for the denials of access, which were communicated by Israeli authorities in the past two weeks.
Two of those medical NGOs, Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), confirmed to The Washington Post that they were notified by the WHO this week about the bans. Both groups have worked in Gaza for years preceding the war.
“WHO is concerned about the impact of these denials on Gaza’s strained healthcare system,” the organization said Thursday in a statement. It added that international emergency medical teams (EMTs) deployed to Gaza are essential to keeping the system operational, as only 17 of the enclave’s 36 hospitals remain functional and “healthcare needs far exceed the system’s capacity.”
“WHO calls for urgent and sustained facilitation of entry for EMTs into Gaza and access for humanitarian aid across the Strip,” it said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating relief in Gaza, said Friday in response to a request for comment that Israel “does not limit the number of humanitarian teams that can enter Gaza on behalf of the international community, subject to technical arrangements required for security reasons.”
In recent months, it said, Israel has facilitated the entry of more than 1,000 doctors and humanitarian teams.
The Biden administration recently warned that it could suspend military assistance to Israel if it does not ramp up the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza within a month.
Israel allows in only a small number of international aid workers through the Kerem Shalom crossing and has denied journalists independent access to the Strip throughout the year-long war. Since capturing the Rafah crossing to Egypt in May, Israel has controlled all movement in and out of Gaza. Palestinians are barred from leaving the enclave, except in what are now rare cases of medical evacuations.
“Health-care workers are some of the only international observers that have witnessed acts that amount to war crimes in Gaza,” said Dorotea Gucciardo, director of development for Glia, an international humanitarian organization specializing in high-quality medical equipment and one of the organizations recently barred from entering the Strip.
“It is difficult for me to not believe that the decision to ban international health-care workers is a deliberate attempt to limit international observers in Gaza,” she added.
Though hospitals are protected under international law, health-care facilities in Gaza have repeatedly been targeted in Israeli attacks. Aid groups say hospitals have been hit by airstrikes, medical convoys have been fired upon, health-care workers have been killed and medical shelters forced to evacuate. Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants hiding in medical centers — charges health-care workers have denied.
Israel also denied two of its partner organizations access to Gaza in August and September, the WHO said. Before this, only individual members of teams had been denied entry, without blanket denials of entire organizations, the U.N. agency said.
In July, CNN reported that Israel was blocking physicians of Palestinian heritage from entering Gaza as part of medical missions.
Majdi Hamarshi, chairman of the board of directors of PAMA, described the bans as “very unfortunate.” He said the group has worked in Gaza for 10 years in areas such as helping children recover from hearing or vision impairment, training local physicians and granting scholarships to medical students.
Since the war, PAMA has sent dozens of international health-care professionals — including surgeons, neurologists and pediatricians — to work in Gaza, he said. He added that the group was sending 15 doctors into the enclave every two weeks until the Rafah crossing was seized, but since then has only been able to send two doctors a month.
Israel has also restricted the import of basic medicines and medical supplies into Gaza. The Washington Post reported in April that medical items rejected by Israel from entering the enclave at least once include crutches, anesthetics and field hospital boxes.
Miriam Berger contributed to this report.
