Controversial US aid group begins operating in Gaza – What’s the real story?

A US-backed aid group has started operations in Gaza amid widespread criticism from the humanitarian sector, international observers, and its own executive director, who has already resigned.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been tasked with distributing aid in the Gaza Strip, a process that reportedly commenced on Monday.

It potentially marks the most substantial distribution of food supplies in Gaza since Israel began blocking aid agencies from entering the region at the beginning of March.

However the privately-run GHF has only been allowed to operate in the Gaza Strip with the endorsement of Israel and the United States. Other long-established humanitarian groups, including the UN’s own network of aid agencies, remain blocked from entering the region.

Because of this, GHF’s operation has come under widespread condemnation for not operating under humanitarian principles.

What is the GHF and what has it done so far?

The GHF is registered in Geneva, Switzerland and, according to the Reuters news agency, operates with private security and logistics operators UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions.

It is the centrepiece of a US plan to distribute aid in Gaza, however it has drawn opposition from aid agencies who have said the plans use a form of manipulation to deliver the aid.

Communications from the GHF indicated it will establish four distribution sites to deliver food and medical supplies to Gazan’s, with a goal to distribute 300 million meals within its first 90 days of operation and reach one million Palestinian people within a week.

More than two million Palestinians used to live in Gaza in apartheid rule, they are now caged like battery hens in a much smaller section of the Gaza strip.

GHF’s operation began on Monday, May 27, just hours after its executive director, former US Marine Jake Wood resigned.

Wood had been the face of the organisation since it was thrust into the spotlight as the aid provider of choice for the US and Israel. He previously ran disaster relief efforts through Team Rubicon, which he co-founded in 2010.

In a statement, Wood said GHF was unable to conform “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”

The GHF plan is criticised from across the humanitarian sector

Wood’s resignation comes after weeks of the UN, independent aid organisations and humanitarian experts criticising the plan for GHF to distribute aid in Gaza with Israel’s endorsement and involvement.

“Aid has to be delivered by neutral parties who are not engaged in conflict,” said Thea Hilhorst, a humanitarian aid researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

“In this case, Israel takes control, Israel is not neutral, [it] is an occupying force and a warring party.”

Central to concerns about the GHF plan has been where aid distribution will take place.

Last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined a three-step plan, which included the use of its defense force to secure aid distribution and “creating a sterile zone in the south of the [Gaza] Strip, to which the civilian population will be evacuated.”

So far, four GHF hubs have been committed in the south, where relatively few Palestinians live. Israel has said this method would prevent aid from being acquired by Hamas. Israel has been engaged in an ongoing war with the militant group following a major terror attack on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 and led to the capture of 250 hostages.

Reports indicate those seeking aid would need to pass through military guard to access the aid.

These measures have been flagged as a move to potentially displace people from the region’s highly populated north. Netanyahu has said that in his aid plan, Palestinians entering a southern sterile zone “don’t necessarily go back [to the north].”

Hunger as a weapon of war

Hilhorst said that that move would amount to ethnic cleansing, particularly as humanitarian principles require aid to be directed to where people are, without forcing them to travel great distances to receive it.

“He’s using this as a kind of tool to remove people from the Gaza Strip, that is the instrument of aid for war purposes,” Hilhorst said.

“The only thing [Netanyahu] should do at this moment [is] opening the borders for assistance. He’s not using that, so it is using hunger as a weapon of war.”

The UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council on May 13 that this tactic appeared about “placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians.”

Hamas on Monday warned Palestinians in Gaza to not cooperate with the GHF, in a statement to media saying the proposed system replaces would “replace order with chaos, enforce a policy of engineered starvation of Palestinian civilians, and use food as a weapon during wartime.”

In the wake of GHF starting its operations, other aid agencies have again called for full humanitarian service to resume.

Jonathan Fowler, a spokesperson for the UN Palestinian refugees agency UNRWA, told DW “there is a tried and tested international humanitarian system that respects international humanitarian law around the world.”

“It did not need to be reinvented. It could work to capacity to bring in aid if it was allowed to do and it’s not being allowed to.”

Nevertheless, as humanitarian groups warn of famine in Gaza, the supply of food aid is a necessary and needed intervention.

But while GHF’s distribution of food supplies is now underway, vehicles controlled by independent humanitarian organizations are still prevented from entering Gaza.

UN-coordinated aid restricted from entering Gaza

That non-food aid is restricted from by supplied amounts to an ongoing siege, said Sarah Schiffling, deputy director of the Finland-based Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Research Institute.

“A siege is cutting off territory from the outside and that’s what we’re seeing here from a supply situation,” Schiffling told DW.

Schiffling said while it was “very positive” GHF had been allowed to bring aid in, it was necessary for other humanitarian aid to enter the region to supply other essential resources, such as fuel, cooking materials, shelter, medicines and other essential items.

“There are many, many trucks worth of aid, aid goods that are much needed lined up along the borders of Gaza that have not been let in,” she said.

“It’s really an access issue, it’s not an issue of procuring these things, it’s not an issue of getting items to the border.”

As well as trucks inside Israel, UNRWA said some 3,000 trucks were currently waiting in Jordan and Egypt to be allowed to cross the Israel border. Some are carrying medicines at risk of expiring.