Home inSight Gaza and Non-Compliant NGOs

Gaza and Non-Compliant NGOs

Mark Zlochin •
SOURCE
UN Women and the Egyptian Red Crescent prepare to deliver aid to Gaza. (Photo: UN Women/Menna Negeda)

Editor: Israel, having found that assorted “civilians” living and working in Gaza, ostensibly for medical and/or humanitarian organizations were, in fact, Hamas operatives or otherwise associated with the terror group, instituted a requirement that international NGOs provide a list of their employees. Most NGOs complied. Some did not. But the requirement led to the charge that Israel had “shut down” NGOs in Gaza.

We turn to Mark Zlochin, who describes himself as “an incorrigible data analysis geek.” We find his analysis compelling – check the sources at the end. Follow him at @MarkZlochin.

Over the past couple of weeks, the UN has run a particularly disingenuous propaganda campaign claiming that Israel de facto banned international NGOs, supposedly triggering an imminent humanitarian collapse. This deceptive narrative rests on a twofold disinformation tactic.

  • Israeli common-sense requirements for basic security vetting of NGO personnel are portrayed as uniquely extreme and unreasonable, creating the false impression that almost no NGO could comply.
  • The UN then cites aggregate figures for all international NGOs – including those that did comply and continue operating – as if they represent the humanitarian loss caused by suspending the 37 non-compliant NGOs.

Let’s start with some basic facts: Israel did not ban international NGOs. It conditioned NGO registration on security vetting of local staff, in response to multiple documented cases of aid, funds, and materials being diverted by Hamas and other terrorist organizations. The objective is to ensure aid reaches civilians rather than being exploited to sustain armed groups.

Many international NGOs complied and continue operating. Only a subset of 37 NGOs refused to comply, and their activities were suspended.

The UN’s current messaging attempts to erase this distinction and recast targeted security enforcement as a blanket ban, with supposedly dramatic humanitarian consequences.

This cynical manipulation is best illustrated by the following claim that appeared not only in UN/NGO press releases but also found its way into the recent joint foreign ministers’ statement on Gaza: “One in three health facilities in Gaza will close if INGO operations are stopped.”

Notice how the phrasing assumes a counterfactual hypothetical scenario – as if ALL international NGO operations were about to be halted – and then frames it as the actual expected outcome.

In reality, while all international NGOs indeed run approximately 30% of health facilities (79 out of 265), the 37 non-compliant NGOs operate only 20 – about 7.5% of the total.

Now, the potential effect of closing those facilities is not totally negligible, but it’s nowhere near the “imminent system collapse” claimed by the UN-initiated propaganda.

Hospital beds follow the same pattern.

UN messaging claims 345 beds (approximately 16%) would be lost if INGOs were deregistered – again assuming the fictitious scenario that all INGOs – including the complying ones – stop operating.

However, when only the non-compliant NGOs are counted, the number is 106 beds, or less than 5% of total capacity.

Food aid claims are even more inflated – starting with the false general claim that “international NGOs delivered about half of Gaza’s food aid in 2024”.

UN’s own data published in UNRWA’s aid tracking dashboard – which by UNRWA’s own admission severely undercounts aid, especially after the Rafah operation – shows INGOs accounted for only about 10–11% of food aid in 2024.

And that’s all INGOs combined, not just the 37 non-compliant ones.

If we focus specifically on those 37 INGOs and consider the total food flows not accounted for in the UN aid tracking system, the contribution of the suspended organization falls to around 1% of the total.

Another food-related UN talking point is that a large majority of Gaza’s cooked-meal provision points “depend on international NGOs,” implying that suspension of the 37 NGOs would cripple hot-meal delivery. This again relies on the same false premise – that all INGO activity is at risk.

In reality, the largest by far provider of cooked meals in Gaza is World Central Kitchen (WCK) – an INGO that fully complied with registration and security vetting requirements and continues to operate in Gaza. As with healthcare and general food aid, the actual contribution of the 37 non-compliant NGOs to cooked-meal provision is a small fraction of the total, not the backbone of the system portrayed in UN messaging.

Shelter and non-food items (NFI) assistance provides another clear case.

The widely parroted claim that “INGOs deliver 75% of shelter/NFI aid” is based on 2024 Shelter Cluster aggregates that are not only outdated but also distorted by a major misclassification – the UAE government-led Operation Chivalrous Knight is classified as INGO-implemented, despite being a state-run operation. That single operation accounts for more than half of the shelter/NFI activities attributed to INGOs in 2024.

Once this misclassification is removed and compliant INGOs are separated from non-compliant ones, the share attributable to the 37 NGOs falls to ~25% in 2024.

More importantly, in the more recent 2025 data, the total reported INGO share drops to approximately 42%, with over half, again, coming from the same UAE state operation. After correction, NGOs that refused to comply account for less than 8% in 2025 – and in the last quarter of 2025, their contribution shrinks further to less than 3%.

Taken together, what we have here is a systematic campaign of shameless gaslighting: reliance on hypothetical scenarios, irrelevant aggregate figures, major misclassifications, and outdated averages to twist basic common-sense security requirements into allegedly inhumane policy with apocalyptic humanitarian consequences.

To be clear – no one claims that the suspended NGOs are absolutely irrelevant. But presenting a small share of aid as if it were the backbone of Gaza’s humanitarian response exposes – yet again – the pathological dishonesty of the UN and its NGO satellites.

Moreover, it also raises serious questions about the motivation behind these efforts to undermine Israeli measures designed to prevent diversion of humanitarian resources to Hamas.

Sources