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U.N. agencies in 10 countries, including the U.K., France and Canada, are urging Israel to reverse a ban on well-recognized international aid groups from entering Gaza. Among the groups now banned is Doctors Without Borders, which provides lifesaving care to people in war zones around the world. NPR reporters Aya Batrawy and Anas Baba zoom in on the group's work in Gaza.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Shouting in non-English language).
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: There's a ceasefire in Gaza now, but every household and family here has lost people, and everywhere one looks are the wounded. This Doctors Without Borders clinic in Gaza City offers something most others can't, specialized wound care.
NOUR ZINOU: (Crying) Momma.
AYA BATRAWY: The medics here are treating 8-year-old Nour Zinou for burns from an Israeli airstrike three months ago. Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, has been operating in the Palestinian territories since 1989, but now it's being banned by Israel, along with around 40 other international aid groups. Israel says they failed to meet new security and transparency standards.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: (Non-English language spoken).
AYA BATRAWY: The MSF doctor at this clinic tries to coax Zinou, in her red tracksuit and ponytail, to move her wrist, where the skin is raw in some parts and forming thick tissue scar in others.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: (Non-English language spoken).
AYA BATRAWY: Gaza's health system was decimated in the war. Clinics like this, run by international aid groups, are helping keep Gaza alive. MSF alone says it treated around a million people in 2025. That's half the population. Hunter McGovern is a project coordinator for MSF in Gaza.
HUNTER MCGOVERN: There's a huge waiting list of people that need care outside of the Strip, and they don't have the ability to leave and go access it. Our operation is already overstressed.
AYA BATRAWY: He says their work includes providing clean drinking water, maternity services and physiotherapy. All of it is at risk now. Israel's decision, which came into effect January 1, bars MSF from bringing in aid or international staff to Gaza as well as the occupied West Bank, which means relying entirely on local staff. Israel says the new rules that led to aid groups losing their registration to operate are aimed at preventing Hamas from infiltrating these organizations. Israel says some local Palestinian MSF staffers have ties to Hamas and one was a sniper. Ishaq al-Bardawil, a local administrator with MSF who was wounded in an Israeli attack on this very clinic, says the organization doesn't take sides in the war.
ISHAQ AL-BARDAWIL: (Non-English language spoken).
AYA BATRAWY: In a statement, MSF says it would never knowingly employ anyone involved in military activities and that accusations without substantiated evidence endanger the lives of humanitarian workers. Here's McGovern again.
MCGOVERN: We're an independent, neutral organization who just tries to provide health care to people. So we would all love to know why we're being halted.
AYA BATRAWY: Israel's new rules for aid groups require they provide information on their funding and detailed lists of staff. But aid groups say this could endanger their employees and that Israel has not said how this data would be used. MSF has had 15 of its staff killed in Gaza. There are among some 400 aid workers killed in Israeli attacks in the war, according to the U.N. Israel says its new rules also ban aid groups if they've engaged in, quote, "delegitimization activities against the state" or in legal persecution of Israeli soldiers. Groups now banned, like Oxfam and Save the Children, have been publicly critical of Israel's restrictions on aid, and their accounts could be cited against Israel in international courts. MSF has also documented through its field clinics Israeli army killings of Palestinians seeking food.
At MSF's clinic in Gaza City, a 14-year-old boy winces in pain as his leg's examined following surgery. Mohammed Ibrahim was run over by a truck when he tried to grab a sack of flour during what experts said was a famine in north Gaza this summer. NPR's Anas Baba explains.
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: He's frustrated. He wants to run. And now he's being treated.
MOHAMMED IBRAHIM: (Non-English language spoken).
AYA BATRAWY: McGovern, who's in Gaza now but won't be allowed back, says children need years of treatment.
MCGOVERN: You know, children missing limbs, children with wicked, life-altering injuries. And it's going to be many lifetimes before this is in the past.
AYA BATRAWY: Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza City.
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