Israel is using the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to co-opt aid for political and military purposes at the expense of the Strip’s civilian population.
As Gaza’s roughly 2 million people face starvation amid an ongoing Israeli onslaught, the latest US and Israel-backed aid operation is failing to address the man-made humanitarian catastrophe. Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, this nightmare is by design. Just as former US president Joe Biden used his ill-fated pier operation to shield Israel from global criticism, the Trump administration is utilizing the same approach today in its backing of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The GHF began aid distribution on May 26, following nearly three months of an Israeli-imposed blockade of all aid entering Gaza. That Israeli effort, alongside its broader military operation, produced the near-famine conditions now prevalent and worsening in the Strip. While Israel lifted its total siege on May 18 amid heavy global criticism, only a minimal number of aid trucks have entered Gaza. Israel collaborates with local armed gangs to prevent most aid transfers once they are within the Strip and to bolster its narrative of Hamas aid diversion.
The United Nations says there is no evidence of Hamas siphoning significant amounts of aid and has demanded evidence from Israel. Rather, Israel and the United States cynically use the aid siphoning argument to sideline the established UN system, arguing that the United Nations is complicit in supporting Hamas. This approach is the equivalent of holding Gaza’s entire population hostage, using food as a weapon of war to force aid agencies to bolster its narrative and desired aid approach.
Yet, when no UN agencies or aid organizations backed the GHF, citing serious and legitimate concerns about impartiality after numerous reports have tied the mechanism to Israel, Washington and Jerusalem moved forward anyway.
Previously based in Switzerland, until a federal investigation led the group to relocate its headquarters to the United States, the so-called foundation is rife with internal issues. Its CEO resigned one day before the operation started in Gaza, citing impartiality issues. Then, the reported primary designer and implementer of the group’s strategy, the Boston Consulting Group, left just weeks into the GHF kickoff.
Those issues pale in comparison to the nightmare on the ground. Since it began sporadically distributing meager amounts of aid from just four locations across the southern Gazan city of Rafah—now a ghost town after Israeli operations leveled the city. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed, with over 1,000 more injured.
As numerous investigations have demonstrated, Israel is primarily responsible for the civilian casualties, likely having opened fire on starving Palestinians as they lined up in the early hours of the day to enter the aid distribution sites. That outcome is the result of widespread deprivation and a serious lack of aid within the GHF sites, which do not adequately meet the needs on the ground.
Simply put, the new operation is not working. Rather, it is further annihilating any sense of safety and security in the Strip at a time when shortages of basic supplies risk full-blown famine.
The effort recalls the 2024 pier operation not only because it was also ineffective but also because its ineffectiveness was a feature, not a bug. Biden’s short-lived aid pier also failed miserably to meet Gaza’s humanitarian needs of Gaza while raising serious impartiality concerns, especially after a deadly Israeli hostage rescue mission near the pier suggested that Washington was allowing Jerusalem to use the location for military operations. In a similar fashion, the UN stopped collaborating with the pier after this criticism was raised, arguing the approach was both inefficient and violated impartiality principles.
As many experts argued at the time, the aid pier was never meant to resolve the humanitarian situation. Rather, the Biden administration’s goal was to deflect criticism from Israel, which refused to allow even limited aid in an obvious effort to collectively punish the people of Gaza for political means. The effort proved costly and unsafe for Gazans and US servicemembers and was ultimately scrapped after just two months of on-again, off-again operations.
However, the timing of the operation was more suspect than simply distracting from Israel’s aid disruption. Just months earlier, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) moved forward with South Africa’s genocide case against Israel for its actions in Gaza. Then, in May 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor referred Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and now-former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for arrest, alongside Senior Hamas officials Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.
With the tide clearly and rapidly turning against Israel, Biden chose to ignore US laws and triple-down on his administration’s support for Jerusalem. The pier operation went into hyperdrive exactly because the charge of “deliberate starvation” is included in the ICJ and ICC cases. When a state deliberately uses starvation as a weapon of war, it is considered a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Yet, somehow, today’s effort under the GHF is more nefarious. To be sure, the effort is certainly connected to further undermining the ICC and ICJ cases, giving Israel plausible deniability that it did not “deliberately” starve the population. That term is critical in an international legal system with serious shortcomings regarding the use of starvation tactics in war.
Rather, today’s aid plan objective is to sideline the United Nations. There are multiple reasons for this move, not limited to empowering Israel to continue using starvation as a weapon of war. Washington and Jerusalem hope to apply as much collective pressure as possible on the entirety of Gaza, in the belief that it will pressure Hamas and create conditions on the ground that are not conducive to Palestinian life in the Strip.
Indeed, the goal is displacement. Netanyahu has said as much in recent interviews. As the thinking goes, Palestinians will be forcibly displaced to areas in southern Gaza around the aid distribution sites, as opposed to making the multi-mile trek daily for marginal guarantees that any aid is available. As people relocated toward the south, Israel would begin facilitating their illegal deportation and Gaza’s ethnic cleansing.
Equally important, the GHF effectively displaces most UN atrocity monitoring in the Strip. The GHF sites are located next to and within closed military zones imposed by the Israel Defense Forces, meaning no unauthorized movement is allowed—including journalists and UN officials. It is incredibly difficult to document human rights abuses in a closed environment where a party to a conflict dictates information flows with the intent of stymieing transparency.
On a basic humanitarian level, this approach should be rejected because it co-opts aid for political and military purposes at the expense of an innocent and uninvolved civilian population. On a strategic level, Trump would be wise to recognize that reality and work to avoid the undue harm it will and is causing to what remains of an already shabby US global reputation. There is no US interest in starving Palestinians while arming the state that is implementing that starvation and ethnic cleansing campaign.Rather, the approach will foment national security threats and radicalize individuals against the United States. It’s possible that the US security contractors at the GHF sites will be at risk. Washington’s relations with the international community will further deteriorate, harming efforts to advance its interests. Americans will be worse off for it—which is nothing compared to what Gazans are facing every single day.
About the Author: Alexander Langlois
Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst and Contributing Fellow at Defense Priorities. He is focused on the geopolitics of the Levant and the broader dynamics of West Asia. Follow him on X: @langloisajl.
Image: Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock.com.
