The images emerging from Gaza this week were both familiar and unprecedented.
Familiar, in that they showed thousands of desperate Palestinians lining up for food. Unprecedented, in that those crowds weren’t swarming UNRWA trucks or local aid convoys but distribution centers run by a little-known Swiss-based NGO operating with quiet Israeli and American support.
What initially unfolded on Tuesday was chaotic.
There were delays, rumors, threats, and even violence. But also, something new and promising: Gazans bypassing Hamas’s orders to accept food from a group unaffiliated with it.
For many in Israel, this is a long-overdue correction – perhaps even a game changer. For critics of the new system in the international community, it’s a troubling shift in how humanitarian assistance is delivered.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a previously unknown Swiss-registered nonprofit backed by American private contractors and facilitated by Israel, began distributing food directly to Gazans on Tuesday under a new model. As of Thursday, around 14,500 food boxes – each containing basic staples able to feed between five and six people for 3.5 days – had been distributed at two locations, with a third distribution point opened that day.
But the story here is not only about the food staples – though they will undoubtedly alleviate hunger in the enclave. The real issue at hand is control. And Hamas knows it, which is why the terrorist group’s reaction was furious.
Hamas warned and threatened people not to participate in the program, circulated false reports that the distribution had been disrupted or suspended, and even set up barriers to make the distribution points in the south – where the IDF has been urging Gazans to move – difficult to access.
All to no avail.
Thousands of Gazans arrived despite the hardships, walking many kilometers to reach the food and trampling Hamas’s barricades to get to the distribution spots. One viral video captured a Gazan father thanking “everyone who helped us – Muslims, infidels, Americans,” while children around him carried the food packages on their shoulders. The message from the ground was unmistakable: Hamas’s monopoly over aid distribution was fraying, and with it, the possibility that its grip on Gazan civilians was also slipping.
THE AID distribution began on the 599th day of the war, a war whose goals include – among others – destroying Hamas militarily and ending its governance over Gaza.
Though the IDF is well on its way to dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities, the terrorist organization has been able to retain its civilian control. According to Israeli officials, this is largely because it hijacked and then controlled the distribution of the aid that has been allowed into Gaza.
“We prepared for far worse scenarios,” a senior IDF officer told Yediot Aharonot after the initial scenes of unrest on Tuesday. “The barrier of fear has been broken. Hamas is at its lowest point in terms of governance.”
The symbolism was striking: hungry Palestinians trampling Hamas-erected fences to reach Americans – guarded along the perimeter by Israeli soldiers – distributing boxes of food.
Israeli officials are framing the new distribution model as both a humanitarian necessity and a strategic tool. In a speech on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hamas looted the aid that flowed into Gaza before Israel blocked it on March 2.
“They [Hamas] took a good chunk for themselves, and the remainder they sold to the civilian population at exorbitant prices,” he said. “And thereby, they funded new recruits because we were able to kill a lot of terrorists. They have to replenish their war machine, their terrorist machine, their terrorist army. So they used the aid to continue the war. And we said, that has to stop.”
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar echoed that sentiment, recently stating that aid “must go directly to the people,” and “Hamas must not be allowed to get their hands on it.”
From this perspective, the new system is a form of disruption – breaking the link between aid and Hamas, undermining its governance, and showing Gazans that there are alternatives.
As former National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror put it in a Galei Yisrael radio interview: “We are trying to sever the ties between Hamas and food distribution…. If we succeed in doing that, it will be a very, very big achievement on the way to building an alternative to Hamas on ‘the day after.’”
But not everyone sees this as a solution. Critics argue that what is happening is not just a logistical shift but a fundamental reframing of humanitarian aid – with all the ethical and legal questions that entails.
A day before the plan went into effect, Jake Wood, the former US Marine who founded GHF, resigned, stating that the group could not function under the humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, and impartiality. His resignation fueled criticism from the UN and major international aid organizations, which argued that placing the distribution of aid under the de facto control of Israel undermines decades of humanitarian norms not to put the aid in the hands of one of the warring parties.
Predictably, this new model sparked an uproar among international organizations. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the arrangement, saying it violates humanitarian principles. The UN and many of its donor countries – including Canada, Australia, the UK, and most of Europe – claimed this is politicized aid designed not to help civilians but to advance Israeli war aims.
That’s rich.
For years, the world was content to look the other way as Hamas turned humanitarian assistance into a tool of repression. While UN agencies and NGOs handed over aid with little oversight, Hamas hijacked it – taxing, reselling, diverting, and using the proceeds to recruit fighters, dig tunnels, and fund its war machine.
This modus operandi continued throughout the war, and there was no uproar in the humanitarian aid community about how this was a “weaponization of assistance.” But now that Israel and the US are attempting to bypass Hamas and deliver food directly to families – through secured, monitored, militarily protected centers – that’s suddenly beyond the pale?
Amidror said that while international organizations, such as UNRWA, were distributing aid, “it was connected to Hamas. Hamas decided what they will and will not do. They took tax from the population and controlled the distribution.” By taking it away, Hamas is weakened substantially.
Or, as Netanyahu said this week, “It leaves the fish without the water.”
The logic runs like this: Hamas is weaker than ever. Militarily, the IDF continues to dismantle its capabilities. Politically, the loss of control over aid distribution hits at the heart of Hamas’s remaining claim to authority. Every family that receives food without Hamas’s blessing is a small act of rebellion. And every day the new model continues is one more crack in the wall of Hamas control.
Still, few in the IDF or the political echelon are declaring victory just yet. “The real test is determination and persistence,” Yediot quoted defense officials as saying. “This effort must not be halted. It is no less strategic than the military campaign.”
The new model is still in its infancy. GHF plans to expand operations to four hubs, with the goal of delivering up to 300 million meals within 90 days. But security concerns remain. The organization’s leadership is in flux. And the international pressure is only growing.
Moreover, this is Gaza, and Hamas is fighting for survival, so what works one day can unravel the next.
But the very fact that tens of thousands of Gazans defied Hamas to obtain food, that Israel was able to help facilitate this without losing control, and that the first distribution didn’t end in total collapse – these are developments that are not only worth noting but also promising.
Still, while Israel and the US see this as a targeted, tactical move designed to serve both humanitarian and strategic goals, much of the world views it as a dangerous precedent. Aid organizations worry that the new model may exclude those unable to travel, punish those in areas outside the “sterile zone” where the aid is distributed, and embed military aims within a humanitarian infrastructure.
Some academics have gone even further. Thea Hilhorst, a professor of humanitarian studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that the new approach was tantamount to “the instrumentalization of aid for war purposes” and warned it could amount to “ethnic cleansing.”
Other international critics see it as using aid as a lever of coercion, not compassion.
The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Tom Fletcher, told the UN Security Council on May 13 that this tactic appeared to prioritize “placing the objective of depopulating Gaza over the lives of civilians.”
But Fletcher’s assessments are suspect. On May 20, he told the BBC that about 14,000 babies would die in Gaza in two days if aid did not flow – an inflammatory and baseless accusation that undermines his, and his agency’s, credibility.
Israel argues that there is no choice but to set up this alternative method of distribution, and that it cannot simply return to a situation where aid is looted and sold on the black market to fund salaries for more Hamas recruits.
The new distribution method – backed, funded, and protected by Israel and the US – is designed to break that cycle.
If it succeeds, it will do more than just feed people. It will chip away at Hamas’s claim to authority. It will empower Gazans to look elsewhere for leadership. And it will help answer the question Israel has been grappling with for 600 days: How do you defeat not just Hamas’s army but also its grip on society?
