Israel recently launched a brutal new offensive in Gaza, followed by an expanded ground offensive, killing and injuring thousands of beleaguered Palestinians. The campaign is intended  to take control of all of Gaza and forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the south.

In conjunction with this devastating new onslaught, Israel and the United States are implementing a plan to take control of the distribution of food aid that is further weaponizing hunger against the population of Gaza in the service of Netanyahu’s objectives. This plan must be rejected — and Israel must be compelled to lift its blockade immediately.

Israel’s blockade against life-saving humanitarian aid persists while 240,000 metric tons of supplies sit idle in warehouses outside Gaza ready to be dispatched. UN partners could deploy enough food to sustain one million people for up to four months as soon as tomorrow if Israel were to open the borders, as they did during the ceasefire earlier this year. We are seeing the effects of this embargo, with 71,000 children facing acute malnutrition and 20 percent of Gaza’s population at starvation levels of famine.

Instead of allowing this aid in, the Israeli military has forcibly taken over humanitarian aid distribution from the UN and its network of experienced NGO partners using a shadowy new group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is operated by a group of contracted U.S. military veterans.

The Swiss-registered GHF was portrayed as an independent aid group, but media investigations revealed that it is in fact a front group created by Israel. Following this revelation, the former Marine who headed GHF resigned, saying it could not operate in a manner that respected “humanitarian principles.” GHF is now operating as a U.S. registered organization under the same name. Tellingly, the former Marine’s replacement is a right-wing Christian American Evangelical minister with close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump.

Israel and GHF’s stated plan has been to limit distribution to restricted collection points — or “camps,” which Gaza’s starving, injured, and severely traumatized population has been forcibly concentrated into. We have seen the horrifying folly of this plan in harrowing, chaotic scenes of starving Palestinians walking miles to seek food aid only to be corralled by the thousands into pens like animals and shot at by the Israeli military.

Just recently, 27 Palestinians were killed as they attempted to collect food aid from a GHF distribution point, a day after 32 Palestinians were killed, and 200 injured, under the very same circumstances. Because of the violence, Boston Consulting Group, which helped design and run GHF’s business operations, terminated its contract with GHF, which ultimately suspended its plans to distribute food aid.

Israel’s forcible takeover of humanitarian aid through the GHF plan is not only sinister for the deadly violence we have seen, but because of its actual purpose: to weaponize aid distribution to drive Palestinians into a small area near the border with Egypt ahead of possible expulsion out of Gaza completely. In fact, as the UN recently noted, the GHF facade is a “distraction from what is actually needed,” which is for Israel to allow the unfettered entry of food and other aid to be distributed by the UN and real aid groups.

Revealing Israel’s true motives, Israeli Minister of Finance Belazel Smotrich said the quiet part out loud when he explained that the Israeli military is carrying out a campaign to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza, where they will be “concentrated” — and “from there, God willing, [removed] to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan.”

Such a plan, UN Humanitarian Coordinator Thomas Fletcher warned, sets a dangerous precedent — one that undermines decades of progress on rules to protect civilians in times of war. And it risks being followed by future bad actors intent on ethnic cleansing.

UNRWA and UN partners have demonstrated during the ceasefire — and every time full humanitarian access has been granted — that they have the expertise and ability to deliver aid at the scale necessary to save lives across Gaza and under the fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality. UNRWA has some 12,000 staff on the ground in Gaza who have been the brave and trusted face of aid distribution, medical aid, water well maintenance, shelter construction and repair, and trauma support for the last 19 months.

Israel’s continued cruel refusal to allow sufficient aid into Gaza is unconscionable and a grave violation of international law. We have already seen condemnation of the latest Israeli offensive and humanitarian aid rope-a-dope from the British, French, and Canadian governments as well as the humanitarian aid sector as a whole.

The Trump administration and other world leaders must act immediately as well and apply concrete pressure on Israel to open the land crossing for the unfettered entry of food and other desperately needed aid. Aid that true humanitarians, trusted and independent, are ready to provide to millions is sitting just outside the border and must be let in.

The U.S. cannot continue to stand by and let Israel, which has been accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza for nearly 20 months, oversee the provision of humanitarian aid to the people it has been victimizing.

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