Israel’s Weaponized “Aid” Plan Forces Thousands of Palestinians to Trek Miles and Risk Their Lives for Meager Boxes of Food

Israel sees the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a tool in its war of annihilation.

On Wednesday, May 28, Palestinians travelled long distances to the aid distribution point controlled by the 'Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation' in the southern Gaza Strip (Photo by Abdallah F.s. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images).

Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, Mohammed Salem was desperate for food. The 42-year old father of five has been fighting to keep his family from starving throughout the nearly three-month, full spectrum blockade Israel imposed on Gaza on March 2. On Tuesday, in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, in the shelter for forcibly displaced people where he and his family have been living, word spread that food parcels had arrived in Gaza. But to collect one, he would need to walk more than four kilometers (2.4 miles) over harsh terrain—the rubble-strewn streets and sand-covered roads that dot the decimated landscape of Gaza—caused by constant Israeli bombing and targeted demolition.

In the early morning hours, Salem set off by foot on the arduous journey south to a new aid distribution center run by the Israeli and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) located in the Al-Alam neighborhood of Tel al-Sultan in western Rafah, an area under the control of Israeli occupation forces.

“When I arrived at the site, I saw hundreds of people lining up in front of iron gates surrounded by security fences topped with surveillance cameras,” Salem told Drop Site News. “The entry process was strict—starting with ID checks and ending with an eye scan—which significantly slowed down access.”

As Salem waited his turn in the morning heat, masses of people continued to descend on the site. The GHF distribution hubs are guarded by armed private security contractors working for a U.S. company and surrounded by chain-link fences channeling Palestinians into tight enclosures surrounded by sand berms. Veteran aid officials across the UN and other international humanitarian aid organizations have denounced the program, describing the conditions as resembling concentration camps or ghettos.

“As the crowd swelled, people began pushing toward the gate and broke through the fence by force, causing the security personnel to flee. The entire scene descended into chaos as people rushed toward the stacked aid parcels in a desperate attempt to grab whatever they could,” Salem said. “I was lucky that I managed to grab two food parcels amidst the chaos.”

The hungry crowds stormed the center and seized aid and equipment, including tables, chairs, and even small trees, which were uprooted to be used as firewood due to Israel’s ban on fuel and cooking gas.

As the facility was overrun, forces opened fire on the crowd. “As people tried to leave with whatever they had taken, Israeli helicopters flew overhead and opened fire on the crowd, injuring dozens,” Salem said.

According to the Gaza health ministry, at least one Palestinian was killed and 48 others wounded. GHF claimed its military contractors had not fired on the crowd but “fell back” before resuming operations. The Israeli military claimed its forces had only fired warning shots.

Salem managed to trudge back carrying the aid parcels on his back to reach al-Mawasi—a two-hour journey. He said his family was overjoyed when he returned with some food. “We want the aid to continue, but the method was humiliating and chaotic, and the journey was too long,” he said. “We need the food to reach us through international organizations—not to walk long distances under dire conditions just to get it.”

Planet Labs PBC produced an infographic with satellite images that map the aid distribution site in the south of the Gaza Strip (Graphic by AFP via Getty Images / © 2025 PLANET LABS PBC)

Khamis Al-Hissi, 37, also arrived at the aid distribution center from al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, hoping to find food for his family of six. He told Drop Site that the distribution process was extremely crowded, slow, disorganized, and conducted amid sweltering heat. He said occupation forces fired live ammunition at civilians in an attempt to regain control. Hundreds of people who came for food aid “left with nothing,” Al-Hissi said.

The distribution hub in Rafah was one of two that officially began operating on Monday by the GHF, which Israel has said would take over all aid operations in Gaza. The other operative hub is located in what is now called the Morag Corridor, between Rafah and Khan Younis. The GHF says it has established four distribution centers in total.

The United Nations and dozens of international humanitarian organizations have rejected the new system, saying it weaponizes access to food and other life-sustaining supplies and allows Israel to forcibly displace starving Palestinians by requiring them to move near the few distribution hubs in the south.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that “there was some loss of control momentarily” at the distribution point in Rafah, adding that “happily, we brought it under control.” He reiterated Israel’s plans to force the entire population of Gaza into a so-called “sterile zone” in the south. Netanyahu said the assertion that Israel is engaged in forced starvation is “the current fad, the current lie” that “spreads like wildfire.” He boasted that Israel had taken "thousands and thousands of prisoners" from Gaza and forced them to take their shirts off. "You don't see one, not one, emaciated,” Netanyahu claimed. “In fact, you see quite the opposite because you don't get that much exercise, certainly not in tunnels."

In a May 19 speech, Netanyahu said that permitting aid to enter Gaza was a strategic necessity to quiet concerns raised by Israel’s allies that Palestinians are being starved in order to continue Israel’s war of annihilation and expulsion.

Khaled Al-Maswabi, 42, from Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, told Drop Site that Palestinians in northern Gaza feel excluded from the new Israeli-American aid mechanism. “There is not a single aid distribution center in the north among the four,” he said. “It’s extremely unjust.”

Al-Maswabi said he believes this exclusion is intentional. “It aims to push northern residents to relocate southward in search of food—a step toward their displacement from Gaza altogether,” he warned, adding, “But people here are fully aware of this trap and will not leave for any reason.”

Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, have explicitly stated that what Al-Maswabi and other Palestinians fear is the ultimate aim of the aid scheme. On May 19, Smotrich said the goal was to force Palestinians in northern Gaza to the south for eventual deportation to third countries. Netanyahu consistently refers to accomplishing this objective as “Trump’s plan.”

At a press briefing in Washington on Tuesday, the State Department refused to say whether Palestinians forced to travel south for food would be allowed to return to the north, or if the distribution plan will eventually expand to reach areas in the north. “I can’t answer that, regarding the nature of how certain situations would be responded to. I’m not going to speculate, or say, what they should or should not do,” said Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokesperson. “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has an email; they should be reached out to.”

The State Department claimed that 8,000 food boxes were distributed Tuesday through the GHF, saying each box could feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days—equal to 462,000 meals. But according to Eyad Amawi, a Gaza humanitarian coordinator who liaises with international aid organizations and represents thousands of displaced families in Deir al-Balah, that figure is misleading.

“In practical terms, 8,000 food boxes would require no more than seven trucks to deliver. The American organization claims it distributed more aid than the actual number of trucks entering Gaza suggests,” Amawi told Drop Site. “But even so, the scale doesn’t compare. It’s a drop in the ocean.”

“At the beginning of the war, there were more than 377 displacement camps in the south of Gaza before the ceasefire occurred last January . Some of these camps host over 10,000 displaced individuals each,” he added. “The distribution they managed wouldn’t even cover a single camp.”

“The Clock is Ticking Toward Famine”

Since the start of the Gaza genocide, both the U.S. and Israel have intensified their attacks on the main UN institution providing aid to forcibly displaced Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). UNRWA was established in 1949, following the creation of the state of Israel and the unleashing of the Nakba against Palestinians, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their land and homes. Israel has long waged a battle to destroy UNRWA, in large part because it represents an enduring right of return of Palestinians to their land. Israeli officials have made no secret about their view that establishing the GHF is an attempt to replaceUNRWA.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General, denounced the scenes at the distribution sites, saying the world witnessed “shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified, and unsafe.” In a speech in Tokyo Wednesday, he called the GHF scheme “a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities,” pointing out that it undercuts a proven and effective system administered by the UN. “The clock is ticking towards famine, so humanitarian [work] must be allowed to do its life-saving work now,” Lazzarini added. “We used to have, before, 400 distribution places, centres in Gaza. With this new system, we are talking about three to four, maximum, distribution places. So it’s also a way to incite people to be forcibly displaced to get humanitarian assistance.”

Issam Abu Shaweesh, director of a World Food Program aid distribution center in the neighborhood of al-Nasr in western Gaza City, said that the aid parcels lack essential food items like meat, eggs, baby formula, fruits, and vegetables, indicating that the goal is merely “to keep people from dying of hunger,” rather than meeting basic nutritional needs. He said that the chaos and violence at the Rafah distribution hub was predictable, in part because large numbers of people were forced to travel long distances due to the Israeli blockade and the fact that nearly all existing aid sites, particularly in northern Gaza, are empty and have ceased operations.

“This mechanism does not ensure fair distribution across all regions,” Abu Shaweesh told Drop Site, stressing that none of the new centers serve the northern part of Gaza, where the highest population density is located.

In a statement, the Government Media Office in Gaza blasted the new aid distribution system. “These so-called ‘safe distribution sites’ are nothing more than racially segregated ‘buffer ghettos’ established under occupation supervision in exposed and isolated military zones. They represent a coercive model of ‘weaponized humanitarian corridors’ used to advance Israeli security agendas. Far from offering relief, they reinforce policies of starvation and blackmail—especially as Israel systematically blocks aid entry through official crossings and neutral international organizations.”

The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared said several civilians went to receive aid and never returned to their families. The group is calling on the Israeli military to disclose their whereabouts. The family of a Palestinian man, who was interrogated and subsequently taken away by Israeli forces from the distribution site outside Rafah on Tuesday, issued a public statement asking the Red Cross to intervene. "To our shock, he called us under threat from Israeli intelligence officers, demanding information about one of our relatives with whom we’ve had no contact since the beginning of the war,” the family said. "When we were unable to provide the information the army requested, communication was cut off, and we were later informed that he was transferred to a detention center. He is now considered missing."

The director of the Government Media Office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabteh, told Drop Site that the new Israeli-U.S. aid mechanism does not address starvation, but rather manages it with the ultimate goal of forcing people to emigrate from Gaza. Al-Thawabteh said he held both the U.S. and Israel fully responsible for using food as a weapon of war, leading to the collapse of food security in Gaza.

“The scene of thousands of starving people storming the center and taking food by force came after the Israeli army cut off their food and medicine for nearly 90 days,” he said. “This proves the complete collapse of humanitarian conditions and exposes Israel’s false claims that it is not starving Gaza’s residents.”