Israel rejects 100 NGOs’ blame for non-delivery of aid to Gaza

The aid groups are refused for not allowing employees to be vetted for security reasons.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s Defense Ministry rejected Thursday accusations from 100 international NGOs blaming Israel for their inability to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

“The reality is entirely the opposite of the claims that were published,” the ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) wrote on X.

COGAT said that Israel facilitates the entry of aid, but to ensure that it actually reaches the civilian population rather than Hamas, which “sometimes” occurs “under the cover of certain international aid organizations, whether knowingly or unknowingly,” the organizations must submit a list of their employees in Gaza “for prior security screening.”

According to a recent Galei Tzahal report, several truck drivers bringing aid into the coastal enclave have been arrested by the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shabak) on suspicion of being terrorists.

Israel has also shown in the past that some 10% of the Gaza staff of the main organization that helps Palestinians, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), belong to Hamas.

More than a dozen took part in the massacre of 1,200 and kidnapping of 251 people during the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion that sparked the ongoing war.

“The registration process is based on clear professional and security criteria intended to safeguard the integrity of the humanitarian system while preventing the infiltration of terrorist elements into the aid mechanism,” COGAT stated.

The UN itself has reported that between July 27 and Aug. 10, only 8.5% of its trucks reached their destinations in Gaza without being diverted.

“The refusal of some international organizations to provide the information … raises serious concerns about their true intentions and the possibility of ties between the organization or its employees and Hamas,” COGAT added.

The office urged the organizations to comply with the policy so they could join the nearly 20 groups that have registered properly and are bringing about 300 trucks of aid into the Gaza Strip “every day” and “in full cooperation” with the Israeli authorities.

The NGOs had summarily dismissed Israel’s concerns.

They charged that the “so-called ‘security’ vetting” led to registration being denied “on the basis of vague and politicized criteria such as alleged ‘delegitimization’ of the state of Israel.”

They claimed that the process was “designed to control independent organizations, silence advocacy and censor humanitarian reporting.”

The NGOs ended their statement by declaring that sharing personal data of their employees is “unlawful… unsafe and incompatible with humanitarian principles.”

They also suggested that Israel would use this information for nefarious purposes.

“NGOs have no guarantees that handing over such information would not put staff at further risk, or be used to advance the government of Israel’s stated military and political aims,” they said.