Scores of foreign mercenaries have landed in Israel for the launch of a controversial US-backed aid plan for Gaza that could force the UN out of managing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Israel has this week allowed more than 90 trucks into the enclave following an international outcry over a nearly three-month siege that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu admits has pushed Gazans to the brink of starvation.
But Israel has described the resumption of aid deliveries as only a temporary “bridge” to a new mechanism championed by Donald Trump‘s administration.
It expects the system to be up and running by the end of the month, ultimately becoming the only route for food and medicine into wartime Gaza.
The little-known, Swiss-incorporated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would under the plan hand out aid at distribution hubs secured by the Israeli military and private contractors. If they wanted to distribute aid the UN and others would need to use these sites, most clustered in southern Gaza, forcing Palestinians to travel long distances to pick up food.
Yet since it was first floated in early May, the aid initiative has run into repeated issues and people familiar with the plan – which has even received some informal advice from former UK prime minister Tony Blair – say it is far from ready to feed more than two million Palestinians.
The UN, long the principal provider of aid to Gaza, has condemned the arrangement as a “fig leaf” for displacement, while one “board member” referenced in a draft GHF document this month told the Financial Times they were never on the board.
“The entire thing turned toxic,” said one person familiar with the programme.
GHF says it will distribute 300 million meals in the first 90 days and its draft plans are to feed Palestinians for $1.30 (€1.15) a meal, including the cost of paying the foreign mercenaries it will hire to guard the food and its facilities.
But there is no clarity to how the GHF is being funded. No foreign donors had contributed as of last week, according to three people familiar with the plan, raising doubts as to where the funding and aid provision would come from.
A person familiar with GHF’s operations said donors had already committed to at least $100 million but did not name them.
From the outset, the project drew in luminaries in the humanitarian world. According to three people familiar with the situation, Blair spoke to the former World Food Programme chief David Beasley – listed on a GHF document as a possible board member – to check on the plan.
An association with Beasley – a former South Carolina governor who ran WFP when it won a Nobel Prize – potentially helped the credibility of the fledgling project. Beasley did not return calls and messages seeking comment. While he has no formal role with GHF, a person familiar with its operations said the group is in conversation with him.
Nate Mook, the former chief executive of World Central Kitchen, a charity that fed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before running out of supplies due to the siege, was named in an early GHF document as “an invaluable board member”.
Mook told the Financial Times that he was “not on the board” and declined to comment further. The person familiar with GHF’s operations said his name had appeared in a “draft, internal document that was unfortunately leaked to the press”.
GHF has drawn scrutiny for its opaque organisational structure. This includes a Swiss affiliate incorporated early this February by an Armenian citizen with no significant ties to humanitarian work and a second unnamed American arm of the foundation. Little is disclosed about the foundation’s funding.
Israeli media has in recent days run photographs of khaki-clad foreign private security contractors landing in the country and being briefed, ahead of deployment to guard aid convoys and distribution sites.
The two US firms involved – Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions – were hired to run a much smaller checkpoint scheme inside Gaza earlier in the year during a short-lived ceasefire. Neither firm replied to messages seeking comment.
The GHF’s executive director Jake Wood, a US Marine veteran who ran disaster relief agency Team Rubicon, has argued that while the aid plan is imperfect it is the only model with the approval of Israel.
“We are committed to delivering aid in a humanitarian manner – not militarised,” a GHF spokesperson said. “The distribution will be managed exclusively by civilian teams.”
“Now is the time to collaborate on this effort. We understand some of [the UN] concerns, but this new mechanism is the method to get life-saving assistance to Gazans in a way that Israel will allow.”
The Tony Blair Institute denied Blair or the TBI were carrying out formal advisory work on behalf of the scheme.
The UN and other agencies have so far refused to participate, arguing that by setting up just a handful of mass distribution centres – mostly clustered in southern Gaza – GHF will force hungry Palestinians to bring their families to the region bordering Egypt.
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right Israeli finance minister, has described the recent Israel Defense Forces operation as a means to ultimately expel Gazans from the territory and “change the course of history”.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher told the Security Council last week that the GHF plan made “aid conditional on political and military aims”.
“It makes starvation a bargaining chip,” he said.
The GHF has attempted to adjust its original plans to take account of the criticism.
In a letter to the Israeli government last week, the GHF requested that sites also be created in north Gaza. It also pledged not to share personal details of aid recipients and said it would facilitate the entry of non-food items such as cooking and medical supplies. It is unclear whether Israel will heed the changes.
The US and Israel argue that the GHF model is the only way to ensure that none of the aid is stolen by Hamas, an allegation used to justify the siege and the lack of success in eroding the militant group’s grip over the strip.
The scheme hews closely to ideas considered and abandoned by the Israeli military over the past year – including as recently as last month, according to notes from meetings. These revolved around creating cleared “sterile” zones devoid of Hamas where aid could be distributed.
That contrasts with the international community’s model, which involves hundreds of smaller distribution points all across the enclave. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, said his agency had never observed “significant” aid diversion by Hamas and blamed looting incidents on “despair” and lack of food.
Israeli, US and other western officials said they had concerns about the contractors’ rules of engagement in the event of Hamas attacks or in managing crowds of hungry Gazans at distribution sites, which are each meant to serve 300,000 people.
The plan, however, still has the full backing of the US government, which has repeatedly made clear that once in place it will be the only way for humanitarian assistance to get into Gaza.
“President Trump called for creative solutions that would secure peace, protect Israel, leave Hamas empty-handed, and deliver life-saving assistance to the people of Gaza,” a US state department spokesperson said, urging the UN and others to work with GHF. “Due to his inspirational leadership, we are steps away from a major win for everyone.” − Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
