Under the new measures, Israeli authorities are demanding that international organizations provide detailed information, including full staff lists, as part of a process aid groups say is designed to legitimize the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) while sidelining independent humanitarian actors.

In response, multiple organizations say the demands violate European Union data protection laws and are not legitimate regulatory requests, but rather a mechanism to block them from operating in Gaza.

Meanwhile, several international aid groups with offices in the occupied West Bank say they have already been subjected to severe restrictions, including sharp limits on visas for international staff.

Palestinian organizations are also being targeted, with Israeli forces shutting down multiple local groups under security pretexts.

One such organization is the Palestinian Health Work Committee, whose offices have been closed by Israeli forces, further narrowing the space for Palestinian civil society to operate.

Dr James Smith, an emergency physician who has volunteered in Gaza, rejected Israeli claims that the newly suspended aid groups manage only a small number of programs, calling such assertions “misinformation”.

“A situation that is already horrific will be made even more horrific. The changes will be immediate, and they will be ruthless,” he said.

The move is “an extension of Israel’s longstanding strategy of titrating humanitarian access and humanitarian services as a core pillar of the occupation and of the genocide”, Smith said.

“Israel wants to exert totalizing control over all aspects of Palestinian life, not only in Gaza but throughout occupied Palestine,” he added.

Separately, Shaina Low, a communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), one of the organizations recently suspended, said the Israeli regime’s decision was consistent with a long pattern of obstruction.

“It falls in line with what we’ve seen over the last two-plus years of Israeli authorities continually obstructing the operations of humanitarian aid organizations – impartial, independent, neutral, principled humanitarian agencies,” Low told Washington, DC-based National Public Radio (NPR).

NRC, which has worked in Gaza since 2009, will continue its operations on the ground “as best as we can”, Low said.

However, she said the suspension prevents the organization from deploying international staff to Gaza, stripping away critical “extra layer of support, an extra layer of protection” for Palestinian staff working under the conditions of a genocidal war.

Before the suspension, NRC informed Israeli authorities that it could not provide a list of its national staff, citing both staff safety concerns and compliance with EU data protection laws, Low said.

In a related development, she said the organization engaged diplomats and donors in an effort to find an alternative solution with the Israeli authorities.

“But we were not met with good faith from the Israeli authorities. We were not given any alternatives, and so this is where we are now,” Low said.

A consortium of international and local non-governmental organizations has since called on the Israeli regime to reverse its decision to suspend 37 organizations.

The Humanitarian Country Team, which coordinates UN agencies and NGOs working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said it was “urging the Israeli authorities to reconsider” the move.

International NGOs, the group said, “are an essential part of the life-saving humanitarian operation” in the occupied Palestinian territory.