Will Israel’s NGO ban in Gaza impact the ceasefire deal?
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Some international humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank say they cannot comply with Israel’s demands to supply details of Palestinian staff due to data infringement and safety concerns.
Also in the programme: we ask why there is a shortage of female toilets in Japan’s parliament; conservation efforts saving albatrosses in South Africa; and we look at the best moments from Newshour in 2025.
(Photo: A Palestinian man carries food items collected from aid packages dropped from an airplane, amid a hunger crisis, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, August 12, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello to you and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.5 | We're coming to you live from London. I'm Sean Lay. |
| 0:16.9 | Israel's plan to revoke the lic of 37 international non-governmental organisations |
| 0:22.2 | who distribute aid in Gaza and the occupied West Bank |
| 0:25.7 | has been condemned by the European Union and the UN. |
| 0:29.3 | Israel says the group's concerned have failed to supply details of the Palestinian personnel they employ. |
| 0:34.7 | It says it wants to prevent aid being exploited by Hamas. |
| 0:37.9 | The UN's human rights chief Volkert Turk called the ban, due to come into force on |
| 0:41.7 | the 1st of January, outrageous. The EU said it would prevent life-saving assistance reaching |
| 0:46.8 | Palestinians. ActionAid, the International Rescue Committee, Metzance-on-Frontier, |
| 0:52.2 | and the Norwegian Refugee Council, or among those who |
| 0:55.0 | now have 60 days to wind up their operations aiding Palestinians. |
| 0:59.4 | Alex Gander, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in the UK, spoke to Newshouse James Menendez. |
| 1:04.9 | The problem is that many of these organizations, if not all of them, have not vetted the workers, the local |
| 1:11.8 | Palestinian workers. |
| 1:13.5 | And they were, the Palestinian Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad has been using these |
| 1:19.3 | organizations in order to cover themselves. |
| 1:22.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:22.6 | I mean, MSF does reject those accusations. |
| 1:25.8 | They call them unsubstantiated saying they'd never knowingly employ anyone engaged in military activity. |
| 1:31.7 | I agree them. |
... |
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