Latest news with #IsraeliBlockade
ABC News
2 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Aid groups trying to get food into Gaza for months sidelined for shadowy US firm
Thousands of hungry Palestinians overran an aid compound in southern Gaza, desperate for food after weeks of Israeli blockade. They were coming to get parcels from a newly formed agency with links to both the American and Israeli governments. The food is some of the first that Gazans have had access to in weeks because Israel has been stopping almost all aid from entering Gaza since March 2, only allowing small amounts into the strip in the past week. While the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) expand their military offensive in Gaza, the Israeli government has moved to stop the United Nations (UN) and other agencies from distributing food in Gaza and replaced them with a mysterious new contractor. The fate of many there now relies on a plan that echoes previous Israeli proposals to sidestep the longstanding international aid delivery system. Instead of recognised international agencies, a newly registered American private security contractor is now responsible for delivering food to 2.1 million Gazans. The company, Safe Reach Solutions, is unknown in the humanitarian field. It has been backed by a new charity with undeclared funding sources, and has been recruiting combat veterans. The company is reportedly headed by a former senior CIA officer, and was only registered in November last year. Safe Reach Solutions's relief operation is funded by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new charity which initially incorporated in both the United States and Switzerland before dissolving some of its legal entities in the face of investigations. The GHF's stated plan is to set up four aid distribution hubs in southern and central Gaza. The US government said the aid distribution hubs would be secured by the Israeli military outside and armed private security contractors within. But the GHF said there would be no Israeli soldiers near the hubs. "The IDF will not be stationed at or near [distribution] locations," it said. About 300,000 pre-approved Palestinians will be able to go to each of the four compounds, where they will be given "food rations, potable water, hygiene kits, blankets, and other necessary humanitarian supplies", the GHF said in a statement. It aims to expand that to reach more than 2 million people in total. "GHF's mission is to alleviate the suffering of Gaza's civilian population by delivering life-saving aid safely, securely, and in strict adherence to humanitarian principles — ensuring assistance reaches those most in need, without diversion or delay," the GHF said. The agency said it began delivering aid on Monday and would continue delivering aid daily despite the problem at its distribution point on Tuesday. Footage showed thousands of people mobbing the distribution site, but GHF played down the severity of the incident. "At one moment in the late afternoon, the volume of people at the SDS was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties," GHF said. "Normal operations have resumed." The agency said it had delivered about 8,000 boxes of aid so far. "Each box feeds 5.5 people for 3.5 days, totalling 462,000 meals," GHF said. Some Palestinians who received aid said they were grateful for the packages. "It's a big box. It is worth 1,000 shekels [about $400]. There is flour, sugar, cookies, there is everything," Salim Shehade, from north Gaza's Jabalia, said. "I can feed my children for a week with that," another recipient, Mohammad Afana, said. According to the Israeli military, 170 trucks belonging to the UN and other aid groups crossed into Gaza on Monday after security inspections. Aid agencies have said 500 to 700 truckloads of aid are needed every day to supply essentials. The Israeli military department that deals with civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian Territories, COGAT, said it had cleared 400 trucks belonging to the UN and other agencies to enter Gaza. "The contents, containing primarily food, have accumulated in the past several days and are waiting for collection and distribution by UN teams, which have yet to arrive, collect and distribute aid to the Gazan civilians in the past week," the agency's head, Major-General Ghassan Alian, said in a statement." The United Nations and other groups have said Israel's escalation of its military campaign, refusal to coordinate access and the resulting chaos inside Gaza have made it almost impossible to safely deliver aid. The UN and established humanitarian groups have also expressed outrage about GHF's plan, which echoes multiple Israeli proposals for humanitarian "bubbles" inside Gaza aimed at isolating the militant group Hamas. Israel accuses the militant group of stealing aid and says its blockade on the entry of food into the strip is partly aimed at preventing Hamas from diverting supplies. But the World Food Programme's Cindy McCain said: "People are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it." "This doesn't have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organised crime or anything." An early plan for bubbles trialled in January 2024 reportedly failed when Hamas killed the Palestinians who had been hired to guard the aid. A similar idea was floated again in July 2024 and then again in late 2024, when Israel's government was being urged to consider something called "The Generals' Plan". Under the proposal from former IDF Major-General Giora Eiland, Israeli forces would clear northern Gaza and only deliver aid to the south. "After all the civilians leave and only the combatants stay, then we don't have to fight," he told the ABC in November. "Those combatants who stay in this area will have to decide either to surrender or to die of starvation." Already, the group has run into serious administrative problems. The executive director of the GHF, Jake Wood, resigned on May 25, the same day Swiss authorities announced they might investigate a human rights group's complaint about the organisation. Mr Wood said he resigned because of concerns about the aid mechanism. "It is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon," he said in a statement. The rights group TRIAL International had asked Swiss government agencies to investigate whether the GHF complied with Swiss and international law. After that, the GHF announced it was closing the Swiss entity and would be operating solely with a new, US-registered foundation. The director of that foundation is American lawyer Loik Henderson, who the GHF said was a corporate law specialist. The GHF board said it was disappointed by Mr Wood's "sudden" resignation, but promised to begin deliveries the next day. "Unfortunately, from the moment GHF was announced, those who benefit from the status quo have been more focused on tearing this apart than on getting aid in, afraid that new, creative solutions to intractable problems might actually succeed," the board said in a statement. One experienced humanitarian worker in the region told the ABC that GHF's process was a "shit show", reminiscent of last year's $350 million US military pier that was supposed to help to bring aid to Gaza but broke up in rough seas after operating for only 20 days. "It's pier 2.0," they said. "And also a repeat of the air drops that killed people." Aid groups have condemned the plan from the outset, saying it breaches the humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality. "It makes aid conditional on political and military aims. It makes starvation a bargaining chip. It is a cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement," UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council on May 13. The plan threatens the established practices for delivering aid in conflicts worldwide, Oxfam's policy lead for the occupied Palestinian Territories, Bushra Khalidi, told the ABC. "If this becomes the new normal, the whole world is in trouble," she said. "We are basically turning aid into a tool of control. "If this becomes the only model — fragmented, militarised, opaque — it sets a terrifying precedent not just for Gaza, but for any future crises." The US government is nevertheless backing the proposal, saying it comes directly from President Donald Trump, and denying it is an Israeli plan linked to Israeli military goals in Gaza. "This is not an IDF or an Israeli operation. That would cause some potential partners to say we don't want to be involved," US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told a press conference in Jerusalem on May 9. "The Israelis' role — and this is a significant one — is helping provide security. But they're not operating the distribution, they're not operating the bringing of the food in or the distribution of the food when it gets into Gaza." But investigations by The New York Times and Israeli newspaper Haaretz have both revealed extensive Israeli involvement in the plan. "The New York Times found that the broad contours of the plan were first discussed in late 2023, at private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government," the paper said. Neither the US nor Israeli governments have said who is funding the GHF. "There are some people who have already committed to helping fund," Mr Huckabee said. "They don't want to be disclosed as of yet. When they do, we'll announce them or they'll announce themselves." Israeli Opposition leader Yair Lapid has even suggested the Israeli government could be funding the group, something swiftly denied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether the Israeli military will allow deliveries to the various humanitarian agencies operating in Gaza. The groups said they have thousands of trucks waiting outside Gaza. Israel has only allowed a few hundred to enter the strip in recent days, after 11 weeks of complete blockade that sent Gazans to the brink of starvation, according to the UN and WHO. "We do not need to wait for a declaration of famine in Gaza to know that people are already starving, sick and dying, while food and medicines are minutes away across the border," WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier in May.
BreakingNews.ie
2 days ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Shots fired as US-backed humanitarian centre begins distributing food in Gaza
Chaos erupted on the second day of aid operations by a new US-backed group in Gaza as desperate Palestinians overwhelmed a centre distributing food on Tuesday, breaking through fences. Nearby Israeli troops fired warning shots, sending people fleeing in panic. Advertisement An AP journalist heard Israeli tank and gunfire and saw a military helicopter firing flares. The Israeli military said its troops fired the warning shots in the area outside the centre and that 'control over the situation was established.' Palestinians carry boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP) At least three injured Palestinians were seen by the Associated Press being brought from the scene, one of them bleeding from his leg. The distribution hub outside Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah had been opened the day before by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has been tasked by Israel to take over aid operations. Advertisement The UN and other humanitarian organisations have rejected the new system, saying it will not be able to meet the needs of Gaza's 2.3 million people and allows Israel to use food as a weapon to control the population. They have also warned of the risk of friction between Israeli troops and people seeking supplies. Palestinians open a box containing food and humanitarian aid packages (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP) Palestinians have become desperate for food after nearly three months of Israeli blockade pushed Gaza to the brink of famine. Palestinians at the scene told AP that small numbers of people made their way to the GHF centre on Tuesday morning and received food boxes. Advertisement As word spread, large numbers of men, women and children walked for several miles from the sprawling tent camps along Gaza's Mediterranean coast. To reach the hub, they had to pass through nearby Israeli military positions. By the afternoon, hundreds of thousands were massed at the hub. Videos show the crowds funnelled in long lines through chain-link fence passages. Two people said each person was searched and had their faces scanned for identification before being allowed to receive the boxes. Crowds swelled and turmoil erupted, with people tearing down fences and grabbing boxes. The staff at the site were forced to flee, they said. Advertisement An AP journalist positioned some distance away heard gunfire and rounds of tank fire. Smoke could be seen rising from where one round impacted. He saw a military helicopter overhead firing flares. 'There was no order, the people rushed to take, there was shooting, and we fled,' said Hosni Abu Amra, who had been waiting to receive aid. 'We fled without taking anything that would help us get through this hunger.' In a statement, GHF said that because of the large number of Palestinians seeking aid, staff at the hub followed the group's safety protocols and 'fell back' to allow them to dissipate, then later resumed operations. A spokesperson for the group told the AP that no shots were fired from GHF. Speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the group's rules, the spokesperson said the protocols aim at 'avoiding loss of life, which is exactly what happened'. Advertisement GHF uses armed private contractors to guard the hubs and the transportation of supplies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday commented on the turmoil at the Rafah centre, saying, 'There was some loss of control momentarily … happily we brought it under control.' He repeated that Israel plans to move Gaza's entire population to a 'sterile zone' at the southern end of the territory while troops fight Hamas elsewhere. Israel has said the new system is necessary because it claims Hamas has been siphoning off supplies that reach Gaza. The UN has denied that any significant diversion takes place. Cogat, the Israeli military agency in charge of co-ordinating aid, said on Tuesday that 400 trucks of supplies, mainly food, were waiting on the Gaza side of the main crossing from Israel, but that the UN had not collected them. It said Israel has extended the times for collection and expanded the routes that the UN can use inside Gaza. Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office OCHA, told reporters in Geneva that agencies have struggled to pick up the supplies 'because of the insecure routes that are being assigned to us by the Israeli authorities to use.' He said the amount of aid allowed the past week was 'vastly insufficient'.
CNN
3 days ago
- General
- CNN
Chaos erupts on first day of US-backed aid distribution in Gaza after weeks of hunger
Thousands of Palestinians overran a newly established aid site in southern Gaza on Tuesday that is part of a controversial new Israeli- and US-approved aid distribution mechanism that began on Tuesday after months of blockade. Videos from the distribution site in Tel al-Sultan, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), showed large crowds storming the facilities, tearing down some of the fencing and appearing to climb over barriers designed to control the flow of the crowd. A diplomatic official called the chaos at the site 'a surprise to no one.' An 11-week Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid has pushed the enclave's population of more than 2 million Palestinians towards famine and into a deepening humanitarian crisis, with the first resumption of humanitarian aid trickling into the besieged enclave last week. The GHF acknowledged the pandemonium, saying 'the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties.' A security source said American security contractors on the ground did not fire any shots and that operations would resume at the site on Wednesday. 'It's a big failure that we warned against,' said Amjad al-Shawa, director of Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network. 'If Israel believes that through this blockade and emboldening starvation, which violates humanitarian principles, that this distribution method would work, they are mistaken.' GHF said it has distributed about 8,000 food boxes totaling 462,000 meals in Gaza so far. They say the flow of meals will increase each day, with a goal of delivering food to 1.2 million – 60% of Gaza's population – by the end of the week. The GHF claimed it began operating on Monday, but photos from the organization showed only a handful of people carrying boxes of aid, with pallets of boxes sitting at an otherwise empty lot. GHF is readying three additional sites for the distribution of aid, two of which are in southern Gaza and one in central Gaza. All of the sites in the south are in an area that fell under a massive evacuation order one day earlier. There are no distribution sites in northern Gaza – a point of criticism from many aid experts. The UN has previously warned that the fact the initial sites were only in southern and central Gaza could be seen as encouraging Israel's publicly stated goal of forcing 'the entire Gazan population' out of northern Gaza, as Defense Minister Israel Katz put it earlier this month. 'This mechanism appears practically unfeasible, incompatible with humanitarian principles and will create serious insecurity risks, all while failing to meet Israel's obligations under international law,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote earlier this month in a document obtained by CNN. The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israel continues to deny it authorization to deliver food directly to families in Gaza, but they have thousands of trucks ready to enter the strip. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it was ready, with other humanitarian organizations, 'to distribute meaningful quantities of aid the moment we are allowed to.' 'The amount of supplies that were permitted to enter the Gaza Strip has been so minimal that they have not even reached families outside of one small area,' UNRWA said in a statement. Israel and the US had declined to name the humanitarian organizations involved in the controversial new mechanism, but images from the GHF showed boxes labeled 'Rahma Worldwide,' a Michigan-based non-profit organization that says it provides 'aid and assistance to the most vulnerable communities in the world.' This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN
3 days ago
- General
- CNN
Chaos erupts on first day of US-backed aid distribution in Gaza after weeks of hunger
Thousands of Palestinians overran a newly established aid site in southern Gaza on Tuesday that is part of a controversial new Israeli- and US-approved aid distribution mechanism that began on Tuesday after months of blockade. Videos from the distribution site in Tel al-Sultan, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), showed large crowds storming the facilities, tearing down some of the fencing and appearing to climb over barriers designed to control the flow of the crowd. A diplomatic official called the chaos at the site 'a surprise to no one.' An 11-week Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid has pushed the enclave's population of more than 2 million Palestinians towards famine and into a deepening humanitarian crisis, with the first resumption of humanitarian aid trickling into the besieged enclave last week. The GHF acknowledged the pandemonium, saying 'the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties.' A security source said American security contractors on the ground did not fire any shots and that operations would resume at the site on Wednesday. 'It's a big failure that we warned against,' said Amjad al-Shawa, director of Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network. 'If Israel believes that through this blockade and emboldening starvation, which violates humanitarian principles, that this distribution method would work, they are mistaken.' GHF said it has distributed about 8,000 food boxes totaling 462,000 meals in Gaza so far. They say the flow of meals will increase each day, with a goal of delivering food to 1.2 million – 60% of Gaza's population – by the end of the week. The GHF claimed it began operating on Monday, but photos from the organization showed only a handful of people carrying boxes of aid, with pallets of boxes sitting at an otherwise empty lot. GHF is readying three additional sites for the distribution of aid, two of which are in southern Gaza and one in central Gaza. All of the sites in the south are in an area that fell under a massive evacuation order one day earlier. There are no distribution sites in northern Gaza – a point of criticism from many aid experts. The UN has previously warned that the fact the initial sites were only in southern and central Gaza could be seen as encouraging Israel's publicly stated goal of forcing 'the entire Gazan population' out of northern Gaza, as Defense Minister Israel Katz put it earlier this month. 'This mechanism appears practically unfeasible, incompatible with humanitarian principles and will create serious insecurity risks, all while failing to meet Israel's obligations under international law,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote earlier this month in a document obtained by CNN. The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israel continues to deny it authorization to deliver food directly to families in Gaza, but they have thousands of trucks ready to enter the strip. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it was ready, with other humanitarian organizations, 'to distribute meaningful quantities of aid the moment we are allowed to.' 'The amount of supplies that were permitted to enter the Gaza Strip has been so minimal that they have not even reached families outside of one small area,' UNRWA said in a statement. Israel and the US had declined to name the humanitarian organizations involved in the controversial new mechanism, but images from the GHF showed boxes labeled 'Rahma Worldwide,' a Michigan-based non-profit organization that says it provides 'aid and assistance to the most vulnerable communities in the world.' This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNA
3 days ago
- General
- CNA
Gaza humanitarian group is a 'distraction' from what is needed, UN says
GENEVA: The work of a US-backed private humanitarian organisation tasked with distributing aid in Gaza is a distraction from what is needed, such as the opening of crossing points, a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday (May 27). The GHF, which began as an Israeli-initiated plan and has drawn criticism from the United Nations and others, said on Monday it began distributing supplies in Gaza. This follows an Israeli blockade for 11 weeks that was only partially lifted in recent days and that prompted a famine warning from a global hunger monitor and international criticism. "We do not participate in this modality for the reasons given. It is a distraction from what is actually needed (...)," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (OCHA) told a Geneva briefing, calling for the reopening of all crossings. He also called for an end to Israeli restrictions on the type of aid being allowed to enter the enclave, which he said was being "cherry picked" and did not always match needs. Israel is in charge of vetting all aid entering Gaza and regularly rejects a wide array of items it considers could be put to military use by militant group Hamas. It says the new system is aimed at separating aid from Hamas, which it accuses of stealing and using food to impose control over the population, a charge rejected by Hamas, which says it protects aid convoys from gangs of armed looters. Juliette Touma, communications director of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, said that it had large medical shipments waiting that have been denied entry into Gaza. "We have over 3000 trucks, not only of food, but also medicines that are lining up in places like Jordan, like Egypt, that are waiting for the green light to go in, and they're carrying medicines and that is expiring soon," she said.
