Patients sit in a clinic in Gaza City run by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, on Dec. 31, 2025.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Mohammed Ibrahim wants to run and play soccer again, but the 14-year-old has had three surgeries since an accident this summer when he was run over as he tried to grab food off an aid truck for his starving family.
A nurse at this Gaza City clinic changes the gauze on his right leg. He winces in pain.
“Focus with us and calm your mind,” she tells him. “You will be just fine.”
“It hurts,” the boy whimpers. Unable to fight back tears, he bursts out: “I can’t! I can’t!”
This clinic is run by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French initials MSF, an international aid group that provides lifesaving care in war zones around the world. But this clinic and MSF’s 19 other health care facilities and medical points across Gaza are facing massive pressure, and some may even have to shut down.
Israel banned MSF and dozens of international aid organizations, preventing them from bringing in aid or international staff to Gaza and the occupied West Bank under new security and transparency rules that came into effect on Jan. 1.
“It’s a catastrophe. An absolute catastrophe,” Ibrahim’s mom, Neama Abu Ghanim, says of Israel’s decision.
She tells NPR that before coming to this MSF clinic, her son spent months unable to sleep from pain, despite seeking treatment in some of Gaza’s still partially functioning hospitals. Gaza’s health system was shattered during two years of war.
“When I came here, they helped him with medicine to sleep for even just a few hours at night, which helped me so much,” she says.
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MSF has been working in the Palestinian territories since 1989. During the war, fifteen of its staff members were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, and their clinics were bombed. Israel accused two of the deceased MSF employees of having ties to militant groups, but MSF denies these allegations, stating they would never knowingly employ anyone involved in militant activities. Israel’s ban on MSF is seen as a violation of international humanitarian law and an attempt to block access to aid.
Numerous countries and U.N. organizations have called on Israel to reverse the ban on international aid groups. They warn that this ban will hinder the progress made in the ceasefire and worsen conditions for people living in makeshift tents during the winter. Several children have already died from hypothermia in recent weeks. Ten countries, including the U.K., France, and Canada, have condemned Israel’s ban as unacceptable, highlighting that a third of Gaza’s healthcare facilities are operated by international aid groups.
Israel claims that the ban on these aid groups will not affect the flow of aid into Gaza, stating that these organizations are not essential for the humanitarian system in the region. However, international staff from these banned aid groups have provided crucial accounts of Israeli attacks in Gaza, especially since Israel restricts independent press access to the area.
Under Israel’s new registration requirements, aid groups can have their licenses revoked if they engage in activities deemed as delegitimizing Israel, persecuting Israeli soldiers, denying the Holocaust, or denying the atrocities of October 7. Many of the banned aid groups have published detailed reports on aid restrictions by Israel, and their staff have provided first-hand accounts of the situation in Gaza. These accounts have been widely reported in the media and could potentially be used against Israel in international legal proceedings related to genocide and war crimes.
Young Palestinian Child Wounded in Israeli Airstrike
A young Palestinian child wounded in an Israeli airstrike is held by his father at MSF’s clinic in Gaza City on Dec. 31, 2025.Anas Baba/NPRhide caption
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In September, 20 aid groups signed a letter after a U.N. commission determined Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, which Israel denies, supporting the findings and saying their staff have seen traumatized children, people with lost limbs and families starving.
At least 15 of the 20 groups that signed the letter are among those now banned by Israel.
MSF also published a detailed report on what it called the “orchestrated killing” of Palestinians by Israeli forces while trying to get food from U.S.- and Israeli-backed sites in Gaza. The report, published at the height of what experts said was a famine, drew on medical data and testimonies from MSF’s field clinic near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site, calling it a “death trap.”
MSF said in a statement after Israel’s ban was announced that if the descriptions of what its teams see with their own eyes in Gaza are unpalatable to some, “the fault lies with those committing these atrocities, not with those who speak of them.”
Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
