Israel blocking visas for Gaza, West Bank aid workers
Israel stopped renewing visas and work permits for foreign aid workers in the West Bank and Gaza on October 7th, according to Bloomberg.
Director of the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), Faris Arouri, said on February 25th, that those affected include country directors and emergency response teams, as-well-as senior management and other expatriates working in the Palestinian territories.
The AIDA umbrella encapsulates Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, Amnesty International, Care International, and Catholic Relief Services, key organizations in distributing aid for Palestinians.
READ: US says Israel is holding back food for 1.1 million Gazans
Arouri stated that the move is “creating a huge bottleneck for organizations,” and that “more than 60 percent of expatriate humanitarian workers have had their visas expire in the past few weeks.”
Israel’s Welfare Ministry spokesperson, Gil Horev, claimed that his office is no longer equipped to carry out the requisite background checks, to issue visa recommendations for aid workers in the Palestinian territories, and urged the Prime Minister’s office to designate a different agency to the task.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s office claimed to have asked the county’s National Security Council to assess the best way to proceed, which may take some time.
Israel has long accused some NGOs of holding hostile political agendas and claims to have evidence that some UN workers in Gaza took part in Hamas’ October 7th attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, according to official Israeli figures.
Israel launched an indiscriminate retaliatory assault on Gaza which, now in its fourth month, has killed almost 30,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s estimates.
Israeli media claimed that representatives from the US, Egypt, Qatar, and Israel, made progress in talks regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and exchange of Israeli hostages for detained Palestinians on February 23rd, according to AFP.
READ: Israel frees two hostages in under-threat Rafah
Meanwhile, conditions in Gaza are increasingly desperate and Palestinian workers in the West Bank have been barred from entering Israeli territory.
Retired Israeli scientist and NGO Monitor founder, Gerald Steinberg, said that some of the organizations in question “have been propagandists of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli aggression,” and that the block on visa renewal is a welcome sight, stating: “October 7th changed the rules.”
Bloomberg / AFP
