Gaza foundation is a humanitarian face to mask Israel's genocide

Middle East Eye

3 days ago

Amid the relentless mass killings, starvation and dispossession in the ruins of Gaza, Israel continues to intertwine genocidal attacks with a humanitarian discourse of caring about civilian suffering.
The latest iteration of this strategy of concealing genocidal intent is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) - a joint Israeli-US scheme marketed to an international liberal audience as a gesture of compliance with humanitarian norms during military operations.
In practice, however, the GHF is yet another example of Israel's pursuit of eliminationist violence under the pretext of humanitarian actions.
On 16 May, Israel launched a ground invasion named Operation Gideon's Chariots, signalling what appears to be the final phase in a genocidal campaign to permanently recolonise Gaza.
Just a week earlier, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification issued a dire warning: one in five Palestinians in Gaza is now facing starvation. A UN official further cautioned that, under the intensifying siege, as many as 14,000 Palestinian babies could die.
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As international attention refocuses on the use of starvation as a weapon of war, the GHF was already fulfilling its function even before becoming operational. Major news outlets have shifted to debating the legitimacy of the GHF initiative, effectively diverting focus from the ongoing daily massacres.
A fig leaf for genocide
The relatively obscure GHF, incorporated in Switzerland, has recently begun distributing aid from hubs secured by the Israeli military and foreign private contractors. Any aid distribution by the UN or other organisations would be required to operate through these designated sites.
The news emerging from the first day of operations was shocking, though entirely predictable.
First, large crowds of desperate, starving Palestinians were caged in dehumanising conditions within a militarised zone as they waited for small parcels of food unlikely to sustain families for long. Then, when the authorities at the aid distribution point lost control of the process and chaos erupted, the Israeli military opened fire on the crowd, reportedly killing at least one person and injuring 48.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Israel's new model for weaponised aid Read More »
At the heart of the GHF's plan is the intention to provide limited food aid to a starving population on the condition that they accept mass displacement from one part of Gaza's territory to another.
In the words of Tom Fletcher, the UN's under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, it is a "fig leaf for further violence and displacement". Even the recently resigned head of the GHF - Jake Wood, a former US marine who served in the imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - refused to continue with the plans.
This latest system strongly evokes practices that are rooted in the colonial history of genocide in general and part of the phenomenon of concentration camps in particular.
The emergence of concentration camps in the late 19th and early 20th century has brought about the enclavisation of indigenous people in reservations and the expulsion of unwanted populations from their original places of residence to uninhabitable spaces to make way for the development of territory for settlers.
Israel has been experimenting with this type of internment zone since the early stages of the genocide.
Following the failure of the Israeli army-led "humanitarian bubbles" trialled in January 2024 - zones that were supposed to be administered by local figures without ties to Hamas - Israel explored outsourcing aid delivery to private security contractors.
A turning point in Israel's decision to subcontract aid distribution took place after what came to be known as the "flour massacre" of 29 February 2024, when Israeli soldiers indiscriminately shot on crowds of Palestinians desperately gathered to collect flour in the south-west of Gaza City. The attack killed at least 112 people and injured around 760.
In response, the US began air-dropping food over Gaza. However, these efforts quickly came to symbolise the inefficacy of such measures. In one occasion, a pallet of aid dropped from a US military aircraft killed five Palestinians and injured 10 more after the parachutes failed to deploy properly.
In coordination with the US, Israeli forces also oversaw the construction of a temporary floating pier off the coast of Gaza, ostensibly intended to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid by sea.
A new plan
Beyond serving as a distraction and lending legitimacy to Operation Gideon's Chariots, the aid distribution points established by the GHF may also provide cover for Israeli counterinsurgency operations.
This is what seems to have happened in June 2024, when images surfaced showing Israeli special forces operating near the pier during a mission to retrieve prisoners held by Hamas.
The operation, which resulted in the killing of more than 200 Palestinians, led many local and international observers to conclude that the pier was being used as camouflage for military action.
This latest system strongly evokes practices that are rooted in the colonial history of genocide in general and part of the phenomenon of concentration camps in particular
During the same operation, Israeli forces masquerading as civilians used humanitarian aid trucks to infiltrate Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp and carry out the deadly assault.
In conjunction with the GHF, Israel is seeking to introduce a new aid distribution plan in which essential supplies will be provided to pre-screened individuals. Recipients will receive text messages on their cell phones informing them when and where to collect their aid packages, but only after identity verification via facial recognition software.
The US and Israel justify these measures by claiming they are necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing aid, yet they have offered little concrete evidence to support this allegation.
Notably, this aggressive humanitarian face used to mask the terror and destruction of colonial violence is also prevalent within Israel's far-right and religious Zionist camp. Leading figures in this camp, including government ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich, have framed the mass expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt and beyond as a "humanitarian solution".
Legitimising genocidal violence
What we are witnessing, then, is a pattern of humanitarianising genocide. This notion overlaps, in part, with the concepts of "humanitarian camouflage" and "humanitarian violence".
Those concepts' explanatory power lies in revealing how Israel distorts international humanitarian law's protective regulations on evacuations, safe zones and human shields - to take some prominent examples - in order to legitimise genocidal violence.
Humanitarianisation also captures the Israeli appropriation of practices rooted in the contemporary global humanitarian system, namely aid provision and refugee resettlement.
This involves enacting a scorched-earth policy of destruction in collaboration with aid organisations, private security contractors, and militaries willing to provide humanitarian assistance, as well as framing genocidal expulsions as a benign form of humanitarian resettlement.
International aid organisations working in Gaza have so far rightly refused to cooperate with the GHF.
Crucially, the ongoing catastrophe must become a reckoning moment for an international humanitarian sector for too long plagued by collusion with dominant powers through individualistic notions of neutrality.
Anti-colonial solidarity with liberation movements remains the only path forward to collectively insist upon the emancipation of all.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.