Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs notified Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières / MSF) in early February 2026 that it must cease all operations in the Gaza Strip and withdraw by February 28. The order came after MSF refused to comply with an Israeli requirement that all humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza submit lists of their Palestinian employees — a demand MSF called a direct threat to staff safety in a context where more than 500 humanitarian workers have already been killed in Gaza since October 2023.

MSF described the choice Israel was forcing upon it as an impossible one: disclose staff identities and potentially expose them to targeting, or leave and abandon the patients who depend on its care. MSF chose to refuse. Its operations in Gaza include trauma surgery, emergency care, and treatment in areas where the healthcare infrastructure has been systematically destroyed. Removing MSF from that environment will not create a void — it will deepen one that already exists.

Israel has imposed this staff disclosure requirement on all 37 humanitarian organizations it intends to expel from Gaza and the West Bank by March 1, 2026. The organizations have petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court for an emergency injunction. As of late February, the court had not suspended the ban. Aid groups warned that the combined removal of these organizations would have “devastating consequences” for a population that is already experiencing catastrophic humanitarian conditions — a statement that, given what Gaza has endured, represents an extraordinary intensification of an already extreme situation.

The UN, the EU, and multiple governments expressed concern about the expulsions. None imposed consequences. Israel’s position is that it has the right to determine who operates within territory it controls. The ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion found the occupation itself to be illegal. The legal authority Israel claims over who may provide medical care to the people it is occupying is derived from a status that an international court has ruled should not exist.

MSF’s withdrawal will mean fewer surgeries, fewer trauma treatments, and fewer people who receive care in the critical hours after injury. The patients who would have been treated by MSF will not disappear. They will simply be left without care.