Israel has stopped the renewal of visas and work permits for a large number of aid workers who offer crucial support to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza following attacks on October 7th.
Director of the Association of International Development Agencies, Faris Arouri, said those barred include country directors as well as senior management and other expatriates working in the West Bank or coordinating matters inside Gaza, visaGuide.World reports.
Among the AIDA’s members are also Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, Amnesty International, Care International and Catholic Relief Services.
A ministry spokesperson, Gil Horev, told the Times that up to this point, Israel’s Welfare Ministry has had an important role in recommendations for such visas. However, it does not require background checks, and the Prime Minister’s Office has been urged to designate a different agency.
In addition, the Prime Minister’s office said that it had asked the National Security Council to find the most effective ways to proceed, which may take some time.
It’s creating a huge bottleneck for organizations. More than 60 per cent of expatriate humanitarian workers have had their visas expire in the past few weeks because, as of Oct. 7, the Israeli authorities stopped issuing work visas.
Israel has been accused by some nongovernmental organizations of having a hostile political agenda. Following the October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas operatives, in which a total of 1,200 people were killed and 250 were kidnapped, authorities in Israel said they found evidence that the United Nations workers in Gaza were Hamas activists who took part in the assault.
Israel has been attacking Hamas in Gaza for about five months, leaving almost 30,000 people dead, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
US Government Faces Lawsuit Over Israel’s Visa Waiver Program Inclusion
In October 2023, the United States announced that Israel was admitted to the United States Visa Waiver Program (VWP). However, in November 2024, authorities in the United States warned that Israel is violating the visa waiver program by not permitting entry into the country of Palestinian Americans living in the occupied West Bank since October 7.
Recently, the United States government has been sued by several rights and civil liberties groups under pretensions of lack of transparency on Israel’s entry into the visa waiver program.