NGOs say that new Gaza aid model is undermining lifesaving work

Humanitarian organizations say that the Israeli- and U.S.-backed aid organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is meeting only a fraction of the need in Gaza. Worse still, they say, it’s pulling focus from much-needed aid that experienced NGOs can offer, while reducing international pressure on Israel to allow aid to reach people in the region. GHF has been condemned for its ties to the Israeli government and its use of private U.S. contractors for security. It has also been criticized for its lack of experience in humanitarian aid and the violence that has occurred in the vicinity of distribution centers. Who funds the foundation is unclear, and this week, GHF executive chairman Johnnie Moore refused to disclose the donors, though he said that as far as he knows, it’s not funded by the Israeli government. In early June, Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of State is considering giving $500 million to the foundation. Meanwhile, other aid organizations that provide medicine, psychological support, clean water, and sanitation services, as well as therapeutic food for undernourished children and adults, are still struggling to get meaningful quantities of supplies across the border. GHF says that it distributed 19 million meals to people in the region as of June 12 “without incident,” but Gaza’s health ministry says that 223 people have been killed on roads leading to or near distribution centers. On June 11, GHF said that five of its aid workers had died when Hamas “brutally attacked” a bus carrying more than two dozen members of the GHF team, while they were en route to a distribution center. This information has not been verified by outside sources as of the time of publication. At least 470,000 people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger or famine — the most severe stage of food insecurity — and the entire population is experiencing acute food insecurity, according to a report last month by the World Food Programme. The Food and Agriculture Organization said June 5 that the average Gazan is getting just two-thirds of the calories a human body needs to survive. GHF’s operations are so far limited to at most four distribution sites, though only two or three have been operational on most days since they began on May 26. GHF only provides food; it does not distribute medicine or assist with any other types of aid. The concern among NGOs now is that the existence of GHF means that there’s less pressure on Israel to allow more traditional aid organizations to work in Gaza. “GHF doesn’t address the scale and the scope of the needs,” said James Hoobler, a humanitarian policy adviser at Oxfam America focused on Gaza. “It’s not targeted or impartial, it doesn’t do shelter. It doesn't do water. It doesn’t do sanitation. It doesn’t do health care. It doesn’t do mental health and psychosocial support, it doesn’t do all the infrastructural stuff that we need. It doesn’t do mine clearance. It doesn’t do fuel. So our focus is to say, can we please, please, just be able to do these things?” While the Israeli government does allow some trucks into the region, NGOs say it’s far less than is needed. “It's totally inadequate,” said Joe Belliveau, the executive director of MedGlobal, an international NGO that provides medical equipment and care in Gaza. “It feels tokenistic, like [Israel] are saying, look, we’re doing something. We’re providing aid,” he added. “And yeah, they’re doing so in a minute manner, but it masks the fact that they continue to almost completely blockade aid coming into Gaza.” Rolling out the red carpet Traditional aid organizations that operate through the United Nations are currently required to send trucks through a series of checkpoints on their way to their final destination. This includes at least three different divisions of the Israeli Defense Forces checking the trucks, then coordinating with multiple battalions to secure safe passage through active conflict zones, as well as finding ways to avoid looting en route. Israeli forces justify the checkpoints by saying that aid is being diverted by Hamas, but aid organizations say that they aren’t experiencing diversion — and that even if they were, the checkpoints are only making them more vulnerable. These trucks are “sitting ducks” for looters as they wait to get through checkpoints, said an aid worker supporting the Gaza response who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation. “If the concern is about diversion, then this is the worst strategy they could take. We don’t know who the looters are, I don’t know where this stuff goes. It just ends up on the market selling for three times the markup.” The answer to this, the anonymous aid worker said, is to allow more aid in. “If you have it at scale, then there’s no incentive to loot because it’s available in the market and people don’t have a scarcity market.” But barring that, they suggested the battalions could work in tandem to expedite the process and pause fighting during certain hours so that everybody can move forward. GHF, which uses just a few distribution hubs, enjoys much more streamlined access to its sites. But this means people have to walk long distances through active conflict zones to acquire food. “It’s also clear that people with disabilities or the elderly or the very young are also just not able to get to these sites,” Belliveau said. “There are huge swaths of the population that cannot take the risk to go to these distribution sites.” Limited supplies have led to overcrowding and looting, and many still leave empty-handed. GHF said Monday that it gave more than 10,000 meals to community leaders north of Rafah in its first test of “direct-to-community distribution.” But CNN reported that at least one person went as early as 6 a.m. and still left empty-handed. Some reports have indicated that the distribution is also unequal — some leave with several boxes of food while others leave with nothing. Belliveau said this hub model has been touted by Israel as a way to avoid aid being seized by looters or diverted by Hamas, but noted that in his experience, the only destruction of their material has been from IDF soldiers. “There seems to be this general notion that if we set up these [GHF] hubs, then we’ll make sure that aid doesn’t get diverted, but in all the time that MedGlobal has been working in this context, we haven’t seen any direct evidence of aid diversion of the materials that we're providing, let alone the hands on medical care that we’re providing,” he said. A survival bottleneck GHF has only three active hubs, meaning those seeking food must make a dangerous trek there and back. “People are literally on like a drip feed of life support, and they are being asked to walk and carry food for their whole family,” said Hoobler. “You don’t have cars. There’s no fuel. All the roads are out, there are unexploded ordnances and contamination everywhere. So these are the assumptions and the basis and the parameters on which this is being set, and GHF is not asking questions, as far as we can tell.” According to internal documents seen by The Washington Post, under GHF’s plan several months ago, Palestinians would eventually need to live in guarded compounds that would house tens of thousands of people. These types of compounds do not exist yet, but humanitarians are concerned that concentrating food at a few sites could mean that people start setting up settlements near the hubs to reduce the distance they need to travel. “Whether or not it’s deliberate, we’re very concerned that this is facilitating and reinforcing forced displacement and potentially contributing to conditions of de facto — and potentially interminable — encampment,” Hoobler said. Many of the recently reported mass killing events have happened on these bottleneck roads to the sites. GHF has repeatedly denied that any injuries or deaths were associated with their site. “I do think that GHF is obviously using a very, very, very narrow window of interpretation to say that they've had no incidents, because that's not really accurate,” said the aid worker. Neither GHF nor COGAT, the Israeli government body that coordinates all humanitarian efforts in Gaza, responded to several requests for comment. The work GHF doesn’t do Other aid organizations say that even with GHF’s services, Gaza needs more help. “We’re doing just a tiny fraction of what we could be doing,” Hoobler said. “We are able to do some modest water trucking, some modest hygiene stuff, some modest repair and infrastructural stuff, but this system of obstruction is almost completely still in place for us, as with our peers. So what we can do is extremely constrained, and we're pretty much at the limit of that.” Experts say Israel’s unusual cooperation with GHF means key needs, which aid organizations are equipped to handle, go unmet, and that the politicization of aid means missing out on key needs that aid organizations are equipped to handle. “Dry pasta isn’t helpful for people who don’t have fuel and don’t have water and potentially are quite malnourished and need therapeutic feeding,” he said. The U.N. system and the NGOs that work within it are meant to bring the most needed services to the people who need them most. Organizations roll out far more distribution points at a time to avoid overcrowding and looting, and develop trust within communities so that people know that they will be able to get the services they are waiting for. These groups also specialize in community outreach, bringing food directly to the most vulnerable. Organizations such as MedGlobal also have professionals who know how to care for severely malnourished children, people who can do surgeries, and people who know how to safely run a distribution site. GHF has repeatedly said that it wants to work with other NGOs to increase distribution. “GHF’s previous management was very clear that they don’t have the scale and that they can’t meet those who are most vulnerable,” said the anonymous aid worker. “And they don’t want all the other services to go through these hubs because that’s not what they’re set up to do.” But NGOs have said that they can’t collaborate as the group does not follow basic humanitarian principles. On May 22, the then-executive director of GHF, Jake Wood, sent a letter to COGAT saying that aid organizations such as Save the Children, Care International, Project HOPE, and the International Medical Corps would manage the distribution of this aid. Mercy Corps and Catholic Relief Services were also mentioned as aid distributors for the plan. Following this, the majority of those NGOs denied making any agreement with GHF. Both Wood and David Burke, the chief operating officer of GHF, resigned. Both said that it was “not possible” to implement the initiative “while also strictly adhering to humanitarian principles.” The aid worker said that they are working on how to function in parallel, even if not in tandem, with GHF. “I think I could imagine a world in which these hubs exist and there’s still food going through to household level distribution from international NGOs.” They added that the last several days of conflict have shown why NGOs don’t want to work in tandem with GHF. “We’re seeing that everything we feared is coming to pass,” they said. “This is being held up as the solution, and that is blocking organizations like ourselves from being able to function, and that is where the tragedy is here,” Belliveau said.