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GAZA FOOD DELIVERY GROUP FACES QUESTIONS OVER ITS LEADERSHIP, FUNDING
 
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Andrew Roth
May 28, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had faced criticism from aid groups
even before this week’s chaotic rollout _

A child cradles a bottle of cooking oil outside an aid distribution
site in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 27., [Hatem
Khaled/Reuters]

 

After a rollout trumpeted by US officials, the US- and Israeli-backed
effort that claimed it would return large-scale food deliveries
to Gaza [[link removed]] was born an orphan,
with questions growing over its leadership, sources of funding and
ties to Israeli officials and private US security contractors.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had said it would securely provide
food supplies to the Gaza Strip
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ending an Israeli blockade that UN officials say have led to the brink
of a famine.

Instead, early reports and leaked video of its operations that began
this week have depicted a scene of chaos, with crowds storming a
distribution site and Israeli military officials confirming they had
fired “warning shots” to restore order. Gaza health officials said
at least one civilian had been killed and 48 injured in the incident.

In a statement, GHF downplayed the episode, claimed there had been no
casualties, and said it had distributed 14,550 food boxes, or 840,262
meals, according to its own calculations.

But GHF had no experience distributing food in a famine zone, and as
of Wednesday, its leadership remained opaque, if not deliberately
obscure. A number of executives and board members have refuted links
to the group or stepped down, including Jake Wood, the ex-Marine who
previously headed the group. When he resigned on Sunday, he said that
it “is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly
adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality,
impartiality, and independence
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which I will not abandon”. The group named John Acree, a former
senior official at USAID, as its interim executive director.

Both a Geneva-based company and a Delaware-based company tied to the
organisation are reportedly being dissolved, a GHF spokesperson told
an investigative Israeli media outlet, increasing speculation over its
initiators and sources of funding. The New York Times has reported
that the idea for the group came from “Israeli officials in the
earliest weeks of the war” as a way to undermine Hamas.

And the US state department has also distanced itself from GHF’s
operations, with a spokesperson saying she could not speak to the
group’s chaotic rollout or what plans could be made to extend aid to
hundreds of thousands more people in Gaza who would not receive aid.

“This is not a state department effort. We don’t have a plan,”
Tammy Bruce, the state department spokesperson, said during a briefing
on Tuesday when asked about plans to extend aid deliveries to those in
the north of the Gaza Strip. “I’m not going to speculate or to say
what they should or should not do.”

She added that any questions about the group’s work should be
addressed solely to the group.

“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has an email,” Bruce said.
“You can – they should be reached out to, and that’s what I’d
recommend regarding plans to expand, plans to make assessments of
what’s worked and what hasn’t at this point and what changes they
might make. And what the goal is – clearly the goal is to reach as
many people as possible.”

But when contacted by the Guardian, the group said it couldn’t
provide a representative for an interview and did not immediately
respond to inquiries about its current leadership, where it was
registered or its links to US security contractors.

The group did defend its food distribution, denying Palestinian crowds
had been fired upon or that anyone had been injured at its
distribution sites.

A statement sent to the Guardian from GHF said that under its protocol
“for a brief moment the GHF team intentionally relaxed its security
protocols to safeguard against crowd reactions to finally receiving
food”.

The group in part blamed the “pressure” on the distribution site
due to “acute hunger and Hamas-imposed blockades, which create
dangerous conditions outside the gates”.

The statement did not address Israel’s role in preventing deliveries
of aid.

“Unfortunately, there are many parties who wish to see GHF fail,”
the group said.

[Gunfire heard as thousands rush to receive aid at Gaza distribution
centre – video]

The UN and other humanitarian organisations have refused to work with
GHF, arguing that doing so would compromise efforts to reach civilians
in all conflict zones, and put at risk both their teams and local
people.

“Yesterday, we saw tens of thousands of desperate people under fire,
storming a militarized distribution point established on the rubble of
their homes,” said Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory.

Others have described the effort as an attempt to use deliveries of
aid as a political weapon.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said that the bloc
opposed the “privatisation of the distribution of humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian aid cannot be weaponized.”

_Andrew Roth is the Guardian's global affairs correspondent based in
Washington DC. He covers the state department and US foreign policy._

* Gaza
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* food aid
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* Care in Chaos
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