Palestinians gather to receive cooked meals from a food distribution center in Gaza City. AFP
"Israeli authorities have rejected requests from dozens of NGOs to bring in lifesaving goods, citing that these organisations are 'not authorised to deliver aid'," the joint statement reads, as reported by AFP.
According to the letter, whose signatories include Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), at least 60 requests to bring aid into Gaza were rejected in July alone.
In March, Israel's government approved a new set of restrictions for foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with Palestinians.
The law updates the framework for how aid groups must register to maintain their status within Israel, along with provisions that outline how their applications can be denied or registration revoked.
Registration can be rejected if Israeli occupation authorities deem that a group denies the allegedly "democratic character" of Israel or "promotes delegitimisation campaigns" against the country.
Aid groups say that the new rules are leaving Gazans without help.
"Our mandate is to save lives, but due to the registration restrictions civilians are being left without the food, medicine and protection they urgently need," said Jolien Veldwijk, director of the charity CARE in the Palestinian territories.
Veldwijk said that CARE has not been able to deliver any aid to Gaza since Israel imposed a full blockade on the Palestinian territory in March, despite partially easing it in May.
Last week, the UN called for the Israeli authorities to rescind its requirement introduced on 9 March obliging NGOs to share “sensitive personal information about their Palestinian employees or face termination of their humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,”
In a joint statement, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Humanitarian Country Team — a coordination body of UN entities and over 200 international and local NGOs —warned against Israeli plans to de-register many international NGO partners working in the occupied Palestinian territories in the coming weeks for refusing to provide personal information about their Palestinian employees.
“Unless urgent action is taken, humanitarian organisations warn that most international NGO partners could be de-registered by 9 September or sooner, forcing them to withdraw all international staff and preventing them from providing critical, life-saving humanitarian assistance to Palestinians,” the statement read.
Since May, the Israeli government has relied on the US-Israeli so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to manage food distribution centres.
However, the GHF operations have been frequently marred by chaos and bloodshed as thousands of Gazans have scrambled each day to approach its hubs, where at least 1,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers.
The United Nations and international aid organisations have warned that famine was unfolding in Gaza as more than 193 Palestinians, including more than 100 children, died of hunger because of a five-month-old Israeli blockade on the strip.
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