US contractors, an opaque entity and unknown funding: This is how Israel plans the future of aid to Gaza

The lifeline on which more than two million Gazans depend is up in the air. The United States and Israel are determined to push forward with an initiative that would control aid distribution in the Strip. Experts warn that its implementation would displace the United Nations, the main humanitarian actor in the territory, and leave one of the largest humanitarian crises on the planet in private hands.

According to its supporters, this new mechanism — which is expected to come into effect at some unspecified time around the end of May — would ensure that not a single gram of flour reaches Hamas. “President Trump called for creative solutions that would secure peace, protect Israel, leave Hamas empty-handed, and deliver life-saving assistance to the people of Gaza,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told the Financial Times. “Due to his inspirational leadership, we are steps away from a major win for everyone,” the spokesperson emphasized, urging the UN to cooperate with the initiative.

The project, which includes U.S. contractors, is formally promoted by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an opaque entity with unknown funding. Its executive director, Jake Wood, is a former U.S. Marine with experience in humanitarian distribution during natural disasters, but much of the rest of the organization remains a mystery.

Israeli soldiers and foreign mercenaries — who have recently been seen landing in Israel — would secure “sterile zones” free of Hamas’ presence, from which the distribution would be carried out. Israeli media reports predict that the North Carolina-based firm UG Solutions will be in charge of distributing the aid. The group has experience with some checkpoints in the Gaza Strip during the short truce that ended in March, but none with crowd management. This conflicts with the proposed mechanism’s plan, which would establish four distribution points in the southern half of the enclave.

Each of these points would serve 300,000 people, something critics see as difficult to carry out safely in a territory rife with hunger and desperation. It is unknown what internal protocols the security agents, paid by this Washington-driven and Israeli-backed project, would operate under, nor what they would do if they lost control of starving crowds. In 2007, men from the U.S. security company Blackwater — now Constellis Holdings — killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad while protecting a U.S. Embassy convoy.

Displace the population

Others see the initiative as a way to displace the civilian population. “It is simply a way to corral Palestinians into a smaller piece of land,” a senior official of the Palestinian National Authority, based in Ramallah (West Bank), warned the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “We fear it aims to pave the way for mass expulsion. Israel won’t need to issue evacuation orders. It simply places food bowls, as it does with stray cats, and hopes people will come. From there, they are just one step away from opening the border with Egypt and inviting the population to cross.”

On Saturday, a group of clans in Gaza — large families with significant social influence — rejected the plan, arguing that it seeks to “militarize humanitarian efforts and transform them into tools of control and espionage.” Its implementation in the Palestinian enclave, they warned, constitutes a “red line.”

The UN has stated that it will not cooperate with the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, whose project is seen by some as a continuation of the occupation of the territory. Tamara Alrifai, director of communications for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), states that an internationally recognized humanitarian system already exists that works when there is political will, and denounces that the mechanism the United States and Israel intend to employ “would contravene the principles of independence, humanity, and neutrality.”

Humanitarian aid, Alrifai laments in statements to EL PAÍS, has been used as “a weapon of war” since the beginning of the offensive, “violating international humanitarian law.” The spokesperson adds that Israeli allegations of the diversion of humanitarian materials to Hamas “are part of a systematic disinformation campaign.” For years, both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have sought to undermine everything related to UNRWA. However, the recent entry of trucks into the Gaza Strip does not remove doubts about the imminent future of humanitarian action protecting millions of Gazans.

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