The Free Press
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been the primary source of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza since its founding in 1949. Despite ongoing budget shortfalls over the last two years, the agency has focused its aid efforts on the two million Palestinians living in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 massacre and Israel’s subsequent ground invasion into Gaza.
The trouble with the UN serving as the main source of aid, Israelis and the U.S. government say, is Hamas.
One of the most alarming facts that emerged following October 7 was the involvement of UN workers, including schoolteachers, in the attack. At least 12 UNRWA employees participated in the attack, including by kidnapping Israelis, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some 10 percent of Gaza’s UNRWA workforce have ties to Hamas or other Islamist militant groups. (The United Nations itself was forced to admit that nine employees of UNRWA “may have been involved” in the attacks.)
Then there is the way that Hamas siphons aid meant for ordinary Gazans.
The terrorist group loots the distribution trucks carrying food and then sells the stolen goods on the black market at inflated prices. Hamas then pays its fighters with the money earned from the black market. In a statement to The Free Press, a UN spokesperson said that “there have been incidents in which criminal gangs of course looted the aid,” and noted that Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, has urged Israel to open two crossings into Gaza, one in the north and one in the south. “To reduce looting, there must be a regular flow of aid, and humanitarians must be permitted to use multiple routes.”
But looting is not all Hamas does. According to a document reviewed by The Free Press based on Israeli intelligence information, Hamas embeds operatives within the UN’s supply chain to manage the flow of funds to the terrorist organization. According to the same document, in 2024 alone, Hamas intercepted $500 million worth of aid.
This has been an issue for years, but over the past three months, it has become dire. Stockpiles of humanitarian aid from the UN have run out after Israel blocked all aid from entering Gaza between March 2 and May 19 as a way to pressure Hamas into extending the ceasefire and releasing hostages.
With people in Gaza reportedly on the brink of starvation, the question has been what can be done about it, given that Hamas controls the food stores and has threatened Gazans who seek outside aid, warning them that anyone who “cooperates” with Israel will “pay the price.” (Just yesterday, videos surfaced on X of Gazans storming and looting a UN World Food Program warehouse. According to CNN, at least two people died during the looting.)
Enter the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which started as an idea in late October 2023 during a brainstorm session in Israel among a small group of prominent entrepreneurs and businessmen from all over the world who, as one source with detailed knowledge of the meeting told The Free Press, understood the mechanisms by which Hamas controlled the population in Gaza through humanitarian aid distribution—and also knew that Gazans badly needed help.
“These were people who thought outside the box,” one of the group’s leaders told The Free Press. “And the idea evolved over the course of 18 months into what it is today.”
The Free Press has confirmed reporting from The New York Times that plans took shape in early spring of 2024, when Israeli American venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg and Israeli tech investor Liran Tancman met with former CIA officer Philip Reilly to discuss how to distribute aid in a new way. Reilly’s company, Safe Reach Solutions, had previously worked in Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, checking Palestinian vehicles for weapons and explosives during a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and was familiar with the region.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s funding structure is unclear, and critics say that Israel is too involved, and is militarizing access to aid through the foundation. The organization is registered in Switzerland and lists David Papazian, the former CEO of the Armenian National Interests Fund, as its president. A spokesperson from the foundation confirmed to The Free Press that one as-yet-unamed Western European country is a major donor.
On Wednesday, under the leadership of Reilly, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its local Palestinian partners, alongside American security contractors from Safe Reach Solutions, delivered an estimated 14,500 boxes of shelf-stable food to Gazans of all ages and demographics. It gave out aid—30-pound boxes full of pasta, rice, flour, cooking oil, and canned goods—at two of what the organization refers to as “secure distribution sites” located in southern Gaza. Israeli troops are stationed at a distance outside the distribution sites, but according to a foundation spokesperson, Israel and the IDF have “no operational control” over the organization’s work and mission, and the organization remains neutral.
Just weeks into starting in his new role as head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, U.S. Marine veteran and entrepreneur Jake Wood stepped down. Wood said this week that he was leaving due to concerns over a lack of impartiality and neutrality in distributing humanitarian aid. (The interim director is John Acree; according to his LinkedIn page, Acree was a USAID employee in Iraq until 2023 and then worked for government contractor Amentum until March of this year.)
Amid the reshuffling of leadership, the first official day of the foundation’s aid distribution on Monday was not without some chaos at the secure distribution sites. According to a senior Trump administration official, Hamas had set up blockades to prevent Gazans from entering the foundation’s secure distribution sites. According to a source who oversaw aid operations on the ground in Gaza, at one point, contractors fired a gunshot toward the ground as a way to get the attention of the thousands of desperate people who were rushing toward the site to get food. The source told The Free Press in an interview that trampling was a “huge concern,” and the gunshots were a way to restore order so that people, many of whom walked many miles to the site on foot, could pick up food and start the trek home before dark.
According to the source, one man who picked up a food box asked four or five times if the food was really free. “It illuminated their perspective on aid and the aid distribution he had experienced in the past.” Videos of Gazans waiting in line to receive food boxes show people waving and cheering.
The hope, says the source, is that once people have more food to eat, the frenzy of the first few days at the secure distribution sites will subside. “I think things are going a little bit smoother the longer we do this.”
None of the foundation’s success in providing over 840,000 meals so far seemed to translate on social media, where images of the aid handout were rapidly turned into memes comparing Gazans waiting for food to Jewish prisoners waiting at Auschwitz.
A source familiar with the operations on the ground told The Free Press that “Rather than focusing on fake memes, we’re looking to the very real videos and images littering social media of people cheering, thanking America, thanking President Trump, and opening their boxes of food with delight. It’s a shame that feeding people in need has become this controversial and fodder for misinformation by Hamas.”
Haviv Rettig Gur, a senior analyst for The Times of Israel, told The Free Press that the fact that Hamas is openly threatening Gazans is a sign that the new aid group is making a difference. “Why is Hamas threatening this? Because they’re desperate and the strategy is working. They’re desperate not to lose control of the aid.”
In a statement from earlier this month, the United Nations denounced the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, calling it “dangerous” to force Gazans to enter “militarized zones” to collect rations. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN’s secretary-general, told reporters at a press conference today that the UN will not work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. “We will not participate in operations that do not meet our humanitarian principles,” Dujarric said. “You know, our efforts in Gaza have been about getting food to people and not forcing people to walk miles in dangerous situations to get food.”
Mike Huckabee, U.S. ambassador to Israel, told reporters in a press conference on May 9 that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation plans to scale their efforts to reach more people in Gaza over the coming weeks and invited the United Nations and other nongovernmental humanitarian aid organizations to join the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s efforts.
“I will be the first to admit that it will not be perfect, especially in the early days,” said Huckabee. “It’s a logistical challenge to make this work, and to make it work well, but all of the partners, both the donors as well as those who will carry out the operation, are committed to getting it launched and making it work.”
A source who oversaw aid operations on the ground told The Free Press that the organization is flexible. “If we’re creating a scenario where people are getting food and then they’re turning around and the food’s being taken away from them, or worse, we’ll rethink how we’re doing this.”
Haviv Rettig Gur told The Free Press that detaching Hamas from humanitarian aid is the right strategy, but the pressure is on to make sure it works. “The Israelis need to understand that there is now a fire burning under them. This aid distribution has to go well and it has to go fast. The war depends on it, the lives of many people depend on it, and Israel’s allies depend on it.”
Watch exclusive footage and eyewitness testimony from inside the boldest wave of anti-Hamas protests in northern Gaza last month:
