Distribution hubs and ‘screening’: How the new aid system will work in Gaza

Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip: A controversial new group backed by the United States to deliver aid in Gaza has been hit by the resignation of two senior executives, including its chief, who said he was quitting amid concerns about the group’s independence.

Despite protests from the United Nations, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is taking over the handling of aid in the war-torn enclave. It said its first trucks arrived in Gaza on Monday, and it had handed out the first of its aid packages from its new distribution centres.

But hours earlier, the group’s executive director, Jake Wood, announced his resignation, saying it was not possible to implement the aid plan “while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon”.

On Tuesday (AEST), The Washington Post reported a second official, chief operating officer David Burke, had also quit the group.

The organisation is the linchpin of the new aid system for Gaza, which wrests distribution away from aid groups led by the UN, which have carried out a massive operation moving food, medicine, fuel, tents and other supplies across Gaza since the war began in October 2023.

Israel had demanded an alternative plan for aid delivery in Gaza because it accuses militant group Hamas of siphoning off aid, but the UN and other aid groups deny there is significant diversion of supplies.

Palestinians inspect the damage at school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit by Israeli military strike in Gaza City on Monday.Credit: AP

The organisation is made up of former humanitarian, government and military officials. It has said its distribution points will be guarded by private security firms and that the aid will reach a million Palestinians – around half of Gaza’s population – by the end of the week.

It began its operation amid fierce Israeli attacks on Gaza on Monday, including on a school building overnight, where dozens of Palestinians who had been sheltering inside were killed while they slept, local health officials said.

Farah Nussair, who survived the attack, said “just the tired ones” who needed food and water had been sheltering in the school, which Israel said it targeted because the building was being used as a centre by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants to plan and organise attacks.

Nussair added, a child in her lap: “We fled to the south, they bombed us in the south. We returned to the north, they bombed us in the north. We came to schools ... There is no security or safety, neither at schools nor hospitals – not anywhere.“

An Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip is seen from southern Israel on Monday.Credit: AP

The UN and aid groups have pushed back against the new aid system being implemented by GHF in Gaza, saying it will “weaponise aid” for Israel’s purposes by forcing the local population to move to where it is being distributed, possibly in violation of international laws against forced displacement.

Many details of how the new aid operation will work remain unexplained, and it is not immediately clear whether aid groups that have refused to co-operate with GHF will still be able to send trucks with supplies into Gaza, where the population of 2.3 million people has been on the brink of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade on food and medical supplies, enacted to pressure Hamas, which controls Gaza.

The new aid system will rely on four major distribution centres in southern Gaza, where people must go to collect supplies. Families will be screened for involvement with Hamas militants, potentially using facial recognition or biometric technology, according to aid officials.

Almost the entire population of the enclave is in northern Gaza, where no hub is located, or in central Gaza. People would have to cross through Israeli military lines to reach the aid hubs near Rafah.

Palestinians bake bread last Thursday after the World Food Program was able to bring in flour for the first time in over a month.Credit: AP

Israel has said it wants to move civilians towards a southern buffer zone as part of its latest military offensive in Gaza. Its strategy is drawing increasing global censure, angering its allies in Europe as well as Australia, and isolating it in international forums.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that under the aid mechanism, Gaza’s population would eventually be moved to a “sterile zone” in Gaza’s far south. He said it was for their protection while Israeli forces fight Hamas elsewhere. He also said once the Palestinians enter the area, “they don’t necessarily go back”.

Israel also says that if Hamas is defeated, it will implement a “voluntary” plan proposed by US President Donald Trump to relocate the territory’s population outside Gaza. The Palestinians, along with nearly all of the international community, have rejected the idea.

Before his resignation, Wood said in a letter to Israeli officials obtained by the AP that until at least eight GHF distribution hubs were operating in Gaza, the existing UN-led system would continue providing food in parallel to GHF.

He also said the UN-led system would continue to distribute all non-food humanitarian aid, everything from medical supplies to hygiene items and shelter materials, because GHF was not capable of handling those supplies.

In the letter, sent to Israel’s military body in charge of aid co-ordination in Gaza, COGAT, Wood said GHF and Israel had agreed on those terms. There was no confirmation from COGAT, however.

Israel blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for nearly three months, but last week allowed in a trickle of humanitarian aid, saying it would let the UN distribute it only until GHF was running. Aid groups say the aid that has come into Gaza over the past week is nowhere near enough to meet mounting needs.

It’s not clear who is funding GHF, which said it had appointed John Acree as interim leader to replace Wood. The group claims to have more than $US100 million ($154 million) in commitments from a European Union government, but has not named the donor.

GHF publicly launched early this year and is run by a group of American security contractors, ex-military officers and humanitarian aid officials. It has the support of Israel and the US, which have said they are not funding it.

The group said on Monday that truckloads of food – it did not say how many – had been delivered to its hubs, and distribution to Palestinians had begun.

“More trucks with aid will be delivered tomorrow, with the flow of aid increasing each day,” GHF said in a statement.

A spokesman for the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jens Laerke recently told the BBC that it would not take part in the new mission.

“There is no reason to put in place a system that is at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organisation”, he said.

GHF says each of its initial four hubs will serve meals for about 300,000 people and will eventually be able to meet the needs of 2 million people. It said it will create more hubs within 30 days, including in the north, but did not specify their exact locations.

Satellite photos from May 10 obtained by the Associated Press show what appear to be the construction of the hubs. The photos show one in central Gaza, close to the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land held by Israeli troops. Three others are in the area of Rafah, south of the Morag Corridor, another military-held strip.

Aid will be delivered with the help of private subcontractors transporting supplies in armoured vehicles from the Gaza border to the hubs. GHF said the aim was to deter criminal gangs or militants.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry on Monday warned Palestinians in Gaza against dealing with GHF and engaging with the new aid system.

“We cannot take part in a system that violates humanitarian principles and risks implicating us in serious breaches of international law.”

Shaina Low, Norwegian Refugee Council

The Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading aid group operating in Gaza, said it also could not take part in a system “that violates humanitarian principles and risks implicating us in serious breaches of international law”.

GHF said in a statement that it was independent and apolitical and would not be part of any mass displacement.

It said its system is fully consistent with humanitarian principles, including impartiality and independence.

The UN and aid groups say the GHF plan could not possibly meet the needs of Gaza’s large and desperate population.

GHF has said that each meal it distributes would have 1750 calories. That is below the 2100-calorie per day standard for meals in emergency situations used by the UN’s World Health Organisation, UNICEF and World Food Programme.

Aid workers also say the change is simply not necessary. The UN and other aid groups “have shown absolutely that they can meet the needs of that population, when allowed to,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said. “We need to just keep reverting back to what works.”

Israel renewed its offensive in March after ending a ceasefire with Hamas. It has vowed to seize control of Gaza and keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed or disarmed, and until it returns the remaining 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, from the October 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in the 2023 attack. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed about 54,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It says more than half the dead are women and children, but it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

Israel’s military campaign has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and internally displaced some 90 per cent of its population. Many have fled multiple times.

Israelis dance and wave national flags on Monday during an annual march celebrating the 1967 capture of East Jerusalem.Credit: AP

On Monday, ultranationalist Israelis gathered in Jerusalem for an annual procession marking Israel’s 1967 conquest of the city’s eastern sector. Some protesters chanted “Death to Arabs” and harassed Palestinian residents.

Police kept a close watch as demonstrators jumped, danced and sang at an event that threatened to inflame tensions in the already restive city.

Hours earlier, a small group of protesters, including an Israeli member of parliament, stormed a compound in east Jerusalem belonging to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has banned. The compound has been mostly empty since January, when staff were asked to stay away for security reasons. The UN says the compound is protected under international law.

AP, Reuters, Bloomberg

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