Gaza – where food aid is a weapon

Under the Israeli blockade, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been growing for months. Gaza’s Food-Security Cluster had already warned in late April that four in five households were skipping meals every day, while a new IPC analysis put 12% of Gazans in Phase 5 ‘Catastrophe’ a – famine marker the World Food Programme says now threatens the entire Strip. 

A UN official told Reuters that the US–Israeli model “will expose people to harm and restrict aid to those able to make the dangerous journey”.

In May of this year The WHO announced that: “The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death. This is one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time.”

Step forward the privately-run and US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the Israeli authorities and operating with IDF perimeter support.

The GHF opened its first ‘secure distribution hub’ on 27 May, with its executives promising “seven million meals in a fortnight” for families trapped by the ongoing Israeli siege.

Three weeks later, cumulative hospital logs showed at least 300 civilians dead and more than 1,100 wounded while trying to reach those hubs.

The scale of this carnage while delivering aid has few parallels in modern relief work.

GHF Board – out of its depth?

The architect of the GHF scheme was conceived by Jake Wood, the former US Marine and founder of US based Team Rubicon. Under Wood, Team Rubicon has grown to nearly 150,000 trained volunteers and has responded to more than 500 disasters worldwide by 2023, earning FEMA’s highest civil society award the previous year.

However, on 25 May – 48 hours before opening day of GHF’s first aid station – Wood quit, saying GHF could not honour humanitarian principles of neutrality or do-no-harm. 

Wood’s sudden departure has left day-to-day control with a Rev Dr Johnnie Moore, a Christian-Zionist lobbyist and ex-Trump ‘faith adviser’. Moore was appointed GHF chair on 3 June with corporate lawyer Loik Henderson and sanctions strategist Raisa Sheynberg rounding out the board; none lists field-aid experience, Sphere training (humanitarian standards and practice) or UN-cluster credentials (a coordination mechanism used to enhance the effectiveness of humanitarian responses to large-scale emergencies).

Swiss regulators also added a formal rebuke on 29 May, ruling that GHF’s Geneva branch is “not fulfilling various legal obligations” – with no Swiss resident director, no auditor and no Swiss bank account. Human-rights group trialinternational urged Bern (and specifically Switzerland’s foreign minister) to open a compliance probe into GHF the same day.

Swiss foundation law is blunt: failure to file an audited statement or name a resident board member can trigger fines of up to CHF 250,000 and appointment of an external administrator – penalties the regulator said on 5 June it is now “actively considering’ for GHF”.

Further cracks have appeared in GHF’s senior management. Financier Jonathan Foster and World Central Kitchen veteran Nate Mook have discovered – via Politico and CBS – that GHF listed them as directors without consent, further underscoring a culture in which compliance with international norms is treated as optional.

A security-first, aid-second operating model:

With humanitarian skills in short supply, GHF has handed the sharp end of aid delivery to two little-known US contractors:

In addition, leaked staffing manifests, reviewed by AP, now show ‘just over 300’ armed contractors on GHF’s payroll – roughly one gun for every ten aid-seekers at peak queues – and put monthly personnel costs near $11mn, almost twice Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) entire annual Gaza health budget’.

An AP/ABC investigation also shows SRS mines drone footage to “identify Hamas operatives”, further blurring the line between relief and warfare. Critics say this turns every food queue into a potential battlefield, perhaps giving an indication as to why Wood resigned in apparent haste.

A timeline of preventable bloodshed

Each GHF hub is many miles south of where most Gazans live and, having made the arduous journey mostly on foot, those desperate for aid relief find themselves funnelled through narrow biometric lanes which have the capacity of about 400 people an hour – far below demand.

On the first day of aid, with leaflets and Telegram blasts having summoned thousands to the Rafah site, processing capacity was woeful, running to a mere few hundreds per hour, where tens of thousands are in need. Eyewitnesses told Reuters that when the gates finally opened, panic surged; guards fired warning shots and Israeli soldiers on the outer cordon responded with live fire, producing mass casualties.

The result of this continuing mismanagement is a rolling cycle of panic, live fire and morgue runs:

Total: ≈ 300= killed / 1,148 wounded (Gaza MoH bulletins and Reuters tallies).

Four of the leaked June incidents’ notes admit ‘crowd-pressure procedures were not fully articulated to line personnel,’ yet to date no public crowd-safety plan has surfaced.

On the biometrics and use of drones

Reports state that the biometric kits used to scan those seeking aid – cloned from Afghanistan’s discontinued HIIDE programme – are hypersensitive to dust and need steady power; repeated outages forced reboot cycles that stretched waits, while guards lacking loud-hailers relied on hand gestures alone, deepening confusion in the crush. 

What is well worth noting – and their use is perhaps the key reason why the Israeli state wanted a private contractor, so have sanctioned the GHF – is the use of drones and biometrics to identify potential Hamas operatives and other undesirables among those seeking aid, something that would not be possible under an ordinary NGO.

Warning lights that flash red – then burst

• Swiss enforcement – Bern may fine or freeze GHF accounts; no remedial filing yet lodged. 
• BCG disengagement – Boston Consulting Group withdrew on 5 June, calling the reputational risk ‘unmanageable.’
• IRS silence – GHF still has no Form 990 (used in the US as the IRS’ primary tool for gathering information about tax-exempt organisations, such as NGOs) on file, so donors cannot see who funds or controls the venture.
• Ongoing UN alternative – The UN’s OCHA has moved thousands of tonnes of food via Kerem Shalom without any armed US guards.

Yet GHF insists its security-heavy model is the only viable route.

What competent relief looks like

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), founded in 1984 and regulated by the UK Charity Commission, publishes audited accounts, discloses every major donor and runs neonatal and limb-rehabilitation programmes inside Gaza. Its 2023 review details Sphere-aligned protocols, safeguarding audits and staff refresher courses in explosive-remnant-of-war awareness.

The contrast is stark: MAP relies on local clinicians, community liaison and weapons-free perimeters; GHF relies on ex-commandos under commercial rules of engagement (ROE). This difference, measured in the cost to human lives, speaks for itself.

Political and humanitarian fallout

Moore has praised Israeli policy as upholding ‘Judeo-Christian values’, language that undermines the neutrality at the heart of humanitarian law. Meanwhile, UN agencies refuse to partner with GHF, citing unacceptable risk.

The violence is now reshaping regional diplomacy. Egypt has reportedly threatened to close the Rafah crossing to any convoy associated with GHF unless ‘independent humanitarian monitors’ accompany each load – a demand confirmed by two Western diplomats on 17 June.

Civil society groups are pursuing accountability. Nine Israeli and Palestinian NGOs have petitioned Israel’s High Court to suspend live fire authorisations around food corridors, while Switzerland’s Foundation Supervisor is assessing fines and potential account freezes.

How to stop this ongoing tragedy

Unless GHF rebuilds around transparent governance, accredited training and robust civilian-safety design, it’s obvious that further lethal incidents will continue. The fix is hardly complex: publish crowd-management SOPs, deploy unarmed protection units trained in humanitarian access and open the books before – not after – disaster strikes.

None of this is novel; all these things are standard practice for serious agencies.

If those steps sound elementary, that is the real tragedy. Gaza’s civilians are dying not because aid is impossible, but because, under GHF’s apparent willingness to screen those seeking aid on behalf of the Israelis in return for potential profit, best practice in delivering humanitarian aid is treated as an optional extra.

Guns can disperse crowds; only trusted, competent relief agencies can feed them.

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