From the Liveblog of
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Doctors Without Borders official: We will keep operating in Gaza ‘as long as we can’
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The local head of Doctors Without Borders tells AFP the charity will continue working in Gaza for as long as possible, following an Israeli decision to end its activities there.
In early February, Israel announced it was terminating all the activities in Gaza by the medical charity, known by its French acronym MSF, after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff per Israeli regulations.
MSF has slammed the move, which takes effect on March 1, as a “pretext” to obstruct aid.
“For the time being, we are still working in Gaza, and we plan to keep running our operations as long as we can,” Filipe Ribeiro tells AFP in Amman, but says operations were already facing challenges.
“Since the beginning of January, we are not anymore in the capacity to get international staff inside Gaza. The Israeli authorities actually denied any entry to Gaza, but also to the West Bank,” he says.
Ribeiro adds that MSF’s ability to bring medical supplies into Gaza had also been impacted.
“They’re not allowed for now, but we have some stocks in our pharmacies that will allow us to keep running operations for time being,” he says. “We do have teams in Gaza that are still working, both national and international, and we have stocks.”
Earlier this month, MSF said in a statement that it had suspended non-critical medical activities at Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis due to the presence of armed men at the medical facility and “a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons.”
The aid group said that armed men had additionally been arresting patients. MSF’s statement appeared to mark the first time that an international humanitarian group in Gaza publicly reported the presence of armed men in a hospital or the possible use of such a facility for moving weapons.
In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organizations, including MSF, from working in Gaza beginning on March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.
It had alleged that two MSF employees had links with Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which the medical charity has repeatedly and vehemently denied.
The Times of Israel Community.