The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, presented as a relief initiative, instead deepens Gaza’s crisis by militarizing aid, sidelining local agencies, and reinforcing political control.

When the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was launched in early 2025, its American and Israeli backers heralded it as a breakthrough. Brimming with promises of innovation, efficiency, and security, the initiative was framed as a new era in delivering aid to Gaza’s embattled population. But on the ground, the picture looks far less hopeful. The GHF is fast emerging not as a remedy but as a symptom—perhaps even a driver—of a deeper political and ethical crisis. Rather than alleviating suffering, it risks entrenching it, undermining humanitarian principles, and aggravating the very crisis it purports to solve.

The Political Context

The GHF’s origins are inseparable from the calculated dismantling of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which for decades served as Gaza’s humanitarian backbone. Through hundreds of distribution points and a workforce largely composed of Palestinians, UNRWA provided food, medical care, and basic services. That infrastructure began to unravel in late 2023, when Israel accused the agency of links to Hamas. Although these claims were largely rejected by the UN and independent investigations, they provided a pretext for slashing funds and imposing severe operational limits.

The result was not mere bureaucratic dysfunction but the engineered collapse of a critical lifeline. This was a deliberate policy choice, not a logistical accident. What followed was a predictable vacuum—a void where food deliveries slowed, clinics shuttered, and clean water became scarce. Into that vacuum stepped the GHF: not as a grassroots solution, but as a top-down, politically curated alternative designed to manage not just aid, but the people who depend on it.

A Militarized Model

The GHF’s operational structure starkly departs from established humanitarian practices. Eschewing Gaza’s once-extensive network of local aid hubs, the foundation now operates just four heavily fortified “mega-sites,” all located in the southern and central areas of Gaza. These facilities are guarded by private U.S. security contractors and Israeli military personnel, transforming aid delivery into a security event rather than a humanitarian one.

For Gaza’s most vulnerable—children, the elderly, the disabled—accessing these sites means navigating an unforgiving landscape of checkpoints, rubble, and crossfire. Unsurprisingly, these journeys often end in tragedy. Since May, international monitors and Gaza’s Ministry of Health have documented hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries near GHF distribution points. Eyewitnesses recount panic, stampedes, and gunfire—scenes more reminiscent of war zones than food lines. Palestinians are increasingly forced to make a brutal calculation: risk death in pursuit of rations, or stay home and face starvation.

Aid as Leverage

The consequences of the GHF’s model are not only operational but existential. By limiting aid to militarized hubs in the south and center, the foundation effectively excludes hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trapped in the devastated north—where famine and disease are most acute. This exclusion is not random. It dovetails with longstanding Israeli policies that promote “voluntary migration” from Gaza and raises the specter of coerced displacement.

Humanitarian groups and UN officials have warned that the GHF is turning food into a lever of demographic engineering. The north starves while the south is positioned as the only space for survival, nudging civilians toward relocation. The use of humanitarian aid in this fashion is not new—it echoes some of history’s most shameful moments, when relief was withheld or manipulated to serve strategic ends.

Dismantling Norms

Unsurprisingly, the GHF has drawn condemnation from across the humanitarian world. More than 170 NGOs—including Oxfam, Save the Children, Amnesty International, and a number of Israeli organizations—have rejected its legitimacy. Their critiques are unequivocal: the GHF violates the foundational principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

Major international bodies like the World Food Programme and the International Committee of the Red Cross have declined to operate under the GHF’s protocols. Their message is clear: real humanitarian work requires professional, impartial actors—not militarized intermediaries. Even more troubling is the GHF’s embrace of biometric tracking and facial recognition software. Framed as tools to prevent diversion of aid, these technologies deepen the sense of surveillance already permeating life under occupation. In a society where personal freedoms are already severely curtailed, such measures feel more like tools of coercion than of care.

By the Numbers

The statistics are damning. By mid-2025, more than 52,000 Palestinians had been killed in the conflict, and nearly 1.9 million—over 90 percent of Gaza’s population—had been displaced. Acute malnutrition afflicts some 70,000 children. According to the World Food Programme, 93 percent of Gaza’s population is experiencing severe food insecurity. And yet, aid remains bottlenecked.

The GHF’s four distribution centers are tasked with serving a population of more than two million—roughly one site per 500,000 people. By contrast, UNRWA’s pre-blockade infrastructure offered nearly 400 distribution points, or one per 5,000 people. Meanwhile, hundreds of trucks filled with desperately needed aid sit idle at border crossings, blocked by Israeli authorities. The crisis is not one of scarcity, but of access.

Silencing the Local

Arguably the most damning indictment of the GHF is its total disregard for Palestinian agency. Designed, funded, and administered without significant input from Gaza’s civil society or established aid groups, the foundation functions as a foreign apparatus. Its operations are tightly coordinated with Israeli military leadership, and its public communications highlight “unity” and “efficiency” while sidestepping the core realities of Gaza’s suffering: occupation, blockade, and the systematic denial of Palestinian rights.

This dynamic is not unique to Gaza. Across the Global South, humanitarian aid has too often been imposed by external actors who claim benevolence while exercising control. In Gaza, that pattern is laid bare. For many Palestinians, the GHF is not a partner in survival—it is a symbol of subjugation.

Rethinking the Model

What would a legitimate, ethical humanitarian response in Gaza look like? It would begin with a radical shift in power. Aid must be rooted in partnership with Palestinians—not imposed on them. That means restoring full support for UNRWA and other neutral, experienced agencies. It means opening humanitarian corridors that extend to all parts of Gaza, including the north. It means designing new initiatives in cooperation with local actors, not foreign contractors and military officials.

More than policy prescriptions, these are moral imperatives. The story of the GHF is a story about who decides what aid looks like, who gets to receive it, and under what conditions. Until the global community reclaims the core values of humanitarianism—impartiality, dignity, and local empowerment—initiatives like the GHF will remain, at best, elaborate performances. At worst, they will be instruments of control masquerading as compassion.