MSF activities in 2025
Gaza
Despite Israel’s blockade and deliberate obstruction of humanitarian access, in 2025 MSF scaled up activities in Palestine to assist people in need of medical care, including those injured and displaced by the genocide in Gaza.
Throughout the year, Palestinians were forcibly displaced and pushed into an ever-shrinking geographic area. MSF teams supporting emergency departments responded to multiple mass-casualty incidents, receiving hundreds of patients killed or injured by Israeli strikes in southern Gaza. We also witnessed how Israeli authorities increasingly suppressed humanitarian space, including by dismantling the UN-led response and replacing it with a militarized food distribution scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). This led to violence and killings at food distribution sites. MSF’s clinics were overwhelmed with patients with gunshot wounds, lacerations, and crush injuries, many of them children, as people were shot at or injured in the chaos as they tried to get food. Across the Strip, our teams treated a growing number of children with moderate and severe malnutrition in the summer of 2025.
MSF called on Israeli authorities to end the violence, allow humanitarian aid to enter at scale, and dismantle GHF sites (which stopped functioning after the October ceasefire). Meanwhile, Israel introduced a new registration system for international NGOs with restrictive and politicized rules, fundamentally jeopardizing the continuation of humanitarian action in Palestine.
At the end of August, Israeli forces launched a large-scale offensive on Gaza City, destroying entire neighborhoods and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of people into the middle of the Strip. As a result, MSF had no option but to relocate teams and suspend all medical activities in the city at the end of September.
After a second ceasefire came into effect in October, Palestinians returned to the north, and MSF teams relaunched activities. We returned to public hospitals, resuming pediatric services, burn treatment, and physiotherapy, and helped repair facilities full of rubble. We also opened multiple medical points to deliver general health care in areas where Israeli forces had destroyed all health facilities. Despite the ceasefire, the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza remained critically inadequate in 2025, and Israel continued to block essential items, such as shelter materials and so-called dual-use items, exacerbating dire living conditions in the winter.
In response to the immense needs, we expanded our medical, water, and sanitation activities throughout the year.
MSF continues to be one of the largest providers of services, including comprehensive care for patients with burns and trauma injuries entailing physiotherapy, wound dressing, surgery, and maternal and neonatal health care. By the end of the year, our teams were supporting six hospitals and seven health care centers. We were also running two field hospitals, two clinics, and an inpatient feeding center, and providing clean water to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
Of the 15 MSF colleagues killed in Gaza to date, six were killed in 2025 by Israeli airstrikes or targeted attacks. Israeli authorities have yet to answer our official request for an independent investigation into these killings. We have made repeated calls for a sustained and immediate ceasefire, urgent and unhindered access for humanitarian aid, medical evacuations, and an end to the genocide.
West Bank
In the West Bank, MSF teams continued to witness the consequences of Israel’s policies and practices of ethnic cleansing, aimed at forcibly transferring Palestinians from their land and preventing any possibility of return. This included a sharp increase in violence by the Israeli military and settlers, who killed more than 200 Palestinians in 2025.
While this violence is not new, in 2025 we witnessed a clear expansion of Israeli settlements and policies aimed at displacing Palestinians. The ongoing Israeli Iron Wall military operation, which began in January 2025, forcibly displaced 40,000 people in the northern West Bank within a month, according to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Three refugee camps were violently raided and emptied. Homes and civilian infrastructure — including schools and health care centers — were demolished, increasing the likelihood that the displacement will become permanent. MSF operated mobile clinics to deliver general health care to thousands of people displaced by the military operations in the north, particularly in Jenin and Tulkarem, and distributed hygiene kits, food parcels, and clean water.
In Hebron, Nablus, Qalqilya, and Tubas, our operations focused on offering medical and mental health support to people affected by settler attacks, demolitions, and displacement, through both mobile and fixed clinics. The constant fear of attacks and incursions by Israeli forces and settlers has taken a significant toll on Palestinians’ mental health, increasing feelings of hopelessness and anxiety, as observed by our mental health teams. MSF also conducted training for Palestinian Red Crescent Society volunteers and supported health care facilities with training and donations of supplies, including water and fuel.
MSF’s registration beyond 2025
Throughout 2025, MSF faced severe operational uncertainty due to Israel’s attempts to control and restrict the activities of humanitarian organizations by demanding they re-register to work in the country and submit private information about Palestinian staff. MSF had considerable and legitimate concerns about sharing this data, and therefore we refused to provide personal details about our staff to Israeli authorities without guaranteed safeguards. We provided all other information requested in August. Our registration expired on December 31, 2025. While MSF is now unable to send supplies or international staff into Palestine, our Palestinian teams remain committed to providing assistance for as long as possible.
