The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created in February and led by seasoned crisis operators,” will now have to rely on the private US-based contractors, including one led by a former CIA paramilitary arm, to guard the aid hubs it intends to set up in Gaza by side-lining the Israeli defence forces.
The Israeli military will not be stationed at the “hubs” but will nevertheless be present “at a distance, said Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel.
The move has invoked widespread criticism from the United Nations, rights organisations, and the EU alike, as Israeli plans to remove the Gazans from north to south cramp the 2 million population in a tiny part of the strip. "The Gazans we remove will not return. They won't be there. We will control the place,” Netanyahu said.
The foundation’s proposal is a fund-raising pitch that says it will use an “independent, rigorously audited model” in providing aid.
“The UN cannot join any effort that does not meet our principles for the distribution of humanitarian aid, including humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters in France.
“The plan appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic and will drive further displacement,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said on Friday, calling it a choice “between displacement and death.”
“It’s dangerous to ask civilians to go into militarised zones to collect rations … humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip,” Elder added.
The UN added, “This is very much an Israeli idea and we don’t believe this is the appropriate answer to the dire situation” in Gaza, the source said.
On Monday, UNICEF and the WFP warned of a "looming catastrophe as 71,000 children and more than 17,000 mothers are threatened by acute malnutrition."
The UN condemns that, through this new plan, only 60 aid trucks per day are entering Gaza, one-tenth of what was being delivered during the ceasefire. Another UN official described the GHF plan as “dystopian” and said it was “clearly not finished.”
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It was “designed to keep things in humanitarian mode without any ceasefire, any recovery, any rehabilitation, or any services,” the official said. “Turning Gaza into a penal colony.”
“This is a new approach with one focus: getting help to people right now,” Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, told the media on Thursday.
Although she said an announcement would be made “shortly” by the foundation, nothing has surfaced. The agency’s press office is also referring questions to GHF, but no contact information is provided by the State Department.
“Putting ‘Humanitarian’ in a name doesn’t automatically make something compatible with basic principles of international humanitarian law,” UNRWA’s Jonathan Fowler told reporters.
“There is a global system in place to provide aid. This scheme would unplug international humanitarian law.”
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