A group of British human rights organizations is sounding the alarm on the Trump administration’s plan to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Under the plan, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.-based organization, would handle the aid and private military contractors would secure the distribution sites. The Israeli military would provide “necessary security.”
An open letter from 11 NGOs, including Action For Humanity and Christian Aid, refers to the plan as a “politicized sham” and a “blueprint for ethnic cleansing.”
“Despite branding itself as ‘independent’ and ‘transparent,’ the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation would be wholly dependent on Israeli coordination and operates via Israeli-controlled entry points, primarily the Port of Ashdod and the Kerem Shalom/Karem Abu Salem crossing,” the letter explains. “This entrenches and legitimises the very structures of control that are responsible for cutting Gaza off from food, fuel, and medicine.”
“Limiting aid distribution to restricted collection points would effectively exclude persons with disabilities and those who are injured and unable to move easily through the destruction and rubble, violating the principle of impartial needs-based humanitarian assistance,” it continues. “Let us be clear: the biggest barrier to humanitarian access in Gaza is not inefficiency or corruption, it is the deliberate restriction of aid by the Israeli government. The military siege on Gaza is a form of collective punishment. The restriction of aid is being used as a weapon of war.”
The plan has also been condemned by the U.N.’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which says the system “contradicts Israel’s obligations under International Humanitarian Law to allow and facilitate impartial humanitarian relief for civilians in need.”
“UN involvement would legitimize a military tactic that would have devastating consequences on the population and would damage the organization’s reputation in Gaza and the region,” reads a recent document from the group.
In recent remarks, U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee admitted that the plan will feed only 60% of Gaza initially and blamed the deadly Israeli blockade on Hamas.
“You have to start somewhere, and the somewhere feeds an enormous level of the people of Gaza,” Huckabee said.
The GHF is headed by Jake Wood, a U.S. military veteran who started the disaster relief nonprofit organization Team Rubicon in response to the Haiti earthquake in 2010.
“This plan is not perfect, but this plan will be feeding people by the end of the month, in a scenario where no one has allowed aid in over the course of the last 10 weeks,” Wood said in his first interview since starting the foundation.
“Ultimately, the community is going to face a choice. This is going to be the mechanism by which aid can be distributed in Gaza,” he continued. “Are you willing to participate? The answer is going to be, you know, pretty critical to whether or not this ramps up to sufficiently feed 2.2 million people in a very desperate situation.”
Wood has insisted that the plan would not lead to the further displacement of Palestinians, but the U.N. points out that it excludes northern Gaza, which could force people to relocate from the north.
The plan has also been condemned by the U.N.’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli leaders have also publicly admitted that the aid plan will enable them to continue their genocidal policies in the region.
In a video posted on social media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the hunger crisis and said that images of famine would impair Israel’s ability to achieve its war aims.
“Our best friends in the world, senators that I know as enthusiastic Israel supporters, who I’ve known for many years, are coming to me and telling me, ‘We give you all the support for a final victory — arms, support on your maneuvers to destroy Hamas, support at the U.N. Security Council,” Netanyahu said. “There is one thing we cannot endure — pictures of mass famine. This is something we are unable to witness. We will not be able to support you.’”
In the same video, Netanyahu said that Israel would “take control of all the Gaza Strip” while delivering “minimal humanitarian aid: food and medicine only.”
These sentiments were echoed by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who held a news conference to assure his base that the aid plan was a means of continuing the genocide.
“The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount,” he explained. “A handful of bakeries that will hand out pita bread to people in public kitchens. People in Gaza will get a pita and a food plate, and that’s it. Exactly what we are seeing in the videos: people standing in line and waiting to have someone serve them, with some soup plate.
“We are disassembling Gaza and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally,” he continued. “And the world isn’t stopping us. There are pressures. There are those who attack [us]; they are trying to [make us] stop; they are not succeeding.”
NBC recently reported that the Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya. Sources say the U.S. government would release billions in funds to Libya that were previously frozen in exchange for the country participating in the ethnic cleansing.
Hamas says it is unaware of any such plans.
“The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount.”
“Palestinians are very rooted in their homeland, very strongly committed to the homeland, and they are ready to fight up to the end and to sacrifice anything to defend their land, their homeland, their families and the future of their children,” senior Hamas official Basem Naim told NBC. Palestinians “are exclusively the only party who have the right to decide for the Palestinians, including Gaza and Gazans, what to do and what not to do.”
This week, Israel cleared nine aid trucks to enter Gaza, marking the first delivery in three months. U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher called it a “drop in the ocean,” as 500 trucks had been allowed in daily before the war.
The organization has warned that 14,000 babies could die within days if Gaza does not receive immediate, substantial aid.
“This is not food that Hamas is going to steal,” Fletcher told the BBC. “We run the risk of looting, of being hit by the Israeli offensive. We will be impeded, we will run huge risks, but I don’t see a better idea than getting that baby food in to those moms, who at the moment cannot feed their own kids.”
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