Controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation ends aid operations
The controversial, US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced that it was halting aid operations in the Palestinian territories after almost six months.
The group had already suspended three food distribution facilities in Gaza after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into force six weeks ago.
GHF aimed to eliminate the UN as the main supplier of aid to the people of Gaza. The UN and other aid agencies have refused to cooperate with the system on the grounds that it is unethical and unsafe.
Hundreds of Palestinians were killed, mostly by Israeli fire, while searching for food in a chaotic environment near GHF facilities, according to the UN. Israel said its soldiers fired warning shots.
GHF said in a statement on Monday that it had ceased operations due to the “successful completion of the emergency mission” of a total of three million packages, equivalent to more than 187 million meals, delivered to Palestinians.
Jon Acree, GHF’s executive director, said the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), established to help implement US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, “will adopt and expand the model that GHF has piloted.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott wrote about
Hamas, which denies stealing aid, welcomed the closure of the GHF, Reuters reported. A spokesman for GHF said it should be held accountable for the harm it caused to Palestinians.
Hazem Kasim wrote on his Telegram channel: “We call on all international human rights organizations not to evade accountability after causing the death and injury of thousands of Gazans and covering up the hunger policy implemented by the (Israeli) government.”
GHF began its operations in Gaza on May 26, a week after Israel partially eased an 11-week embargo on aid and commercial deliveries to Gaza that caused severe shortages of essential supplies. Three months later, famine was declared in Gaza.
GHF’s food distribution sites in southern and central Gaza were operated by US private security contractors and located within Israeli military zones.
The UN and its partners have said the system contravenes basic humanitarian principles such as neutrality, impartiality and independence, and that diverting desperate people into militarized areas is inherently unsafe.
The UN’s human rights office said it recorded the killing of at least 859 Palestinians searching for food near GHF facilities between May 26 and July 31. It was stated that 514 more people were killed near the routes of the UN and other aid convoys. Most of them were killed by the Israeli army, according to the office.
The Israeli army said its soldiers fired warning shots at people approaching them in a “threatening” manner.
GHF said there had been no armed attacks in aid zones and accused the UN of using “inaccurate and misleading” statistics from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The future of the GHF has been uncertain since Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire agreement to implement the first phase of Trump’s peace plan.
It was stated that the aid distribution would take place “without the intervention of the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, the Red Crescent and Hamas and other international organizations that have no relations with Israel.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday that GHF’s closure would have “no impact” on its operations “as we have never worked with them”.
He also said that more aid has been delivered to Gaza since the ceasefire came into force on October 10, but that it was “not enough to meet all the needs” of the population of 2.1 million.
