On May 5, 2025, Israel announced that it had reversed its position on prohibiting all food and other humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, and is launching a new plan that will radically change the distribution system and, it says, prevent Hamas from playing a role in aid distribution, weakening the group. Media reports indicate that Israel has been discussing the plan with European countries and the United States, which supports the plan. Satellite images were recently published of land in southern Gaza near Israeli military bases being cleared for the construction of what experts say will be food distribution hubs. On May 28, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which uses military contractors, began a distribution plan that bypasses the United Nations to deliver desperately-needed food supplies.
While Israel has touted the plan as a solution to the crisis of hunger and starvation in Gaza, its main goal is to control the delivery of food into Gaza and the distribution once inside, including by dictating who actually gets the life-saving help. Right-wing Israeli ministers, including Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, have openly called for the bombing of all food and fuel supplies in Gaza. This is precisely what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was doing since March 2025, while it also stopped all aid from entering. Israel has conducted frequent attacks on bakeries and on clearly marked vehicles of aid organizations such as the World Central Kitchen. In fact, it appears that Israel’s total siege on Gaza as well as its targeting of existing food supplies is aimed precisely at creating the conditions for implementing its new system as the only source of food for the Strip’s besieged and starving population.
How Is the Plan Supposed to Work?
At the heart of Israel’s new plan is a major distribution center in southern Gaza. Rather than letting aid organizations store, prepare, and distribute food in bulk to feed the masses, the IDF will supply designated parcels to meet the needs of individual families for a limited number of days. Only individually screened members from each family will be allowed into the distribution hub; these Gazans will then make a perilous journey back to the rest of their family and return for a new supply designed to only last a few more days.
Israel’s justification for this convoluted and dangerous plan is that it will prevent aid from ending up in the hands of Hamas. Israel claims, without proof, that Hamas captures food and sells it within Gaza to generate income. It is true that as Israel destroys food supplies and hunger spreads, violence and looting will increase as desperate Gazans try to obtain food by any means possible, and armed criminals will use their weapons to steal whatever supplies they can find. But Israel’s assertion that Hamas is funding itself by looting humanitarian supplies has no basis in fact. Indeed, Ambassador David Satterfield, a former senior US diplomat and Gaza aid coordinator for the Joe Biden administration, recently told CNN that “Israel has never privately alleged or offered evidence of Hamas stealing the majority of Gaza aid” from UN and NGO channels and that whatever aid Hamas may have taken was “minimal.”
If Israel envisions its model as controlling access to food and supplies in a starvation atmosphere, it could be a very powerful—and cruel—method of control. Reuters has reported that the United Nations and international organizations have strongly rejected Israel’s plan and are refusing to cooperate with it. They argue that Israel’s system will not provide equitable distribution, protect the neediest people, or ensure the survival of the population in Gaza.
A Method of Control Like COGAT
The Gaza aid plan follows the permit regime used by Israel in the occupied West Bank. Under this system, an Israeli military agency, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), issues or denies permits to Palestinians who need them to work in Israel, to travel to and from the occupied territories, or to conduct any other necessary and normal civilian activities. Permit requests are made to COGAT, which decides on each case separately. Often, the applicant is invited for an interview, where he or she might be interrogated by COGAT, arrested, or pressured to become a collaborator in return for getting the coveted permit. The power of granting or withholding permits allows the COGAT to remotely control Palestinians in the West Bank, including those who live in Area A, which is purportedly administered by the Palestinian Authority.
After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and especially after Hamas took over the Strip in 2007, Israel needed new methods to remotely control the lives of people there. One such method was through international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) that operated there. Israel wanted to know, and to control, who obtained services from them, but the INGOs were reluctant to provide information about their beneficiaries or staff to the Israeli authorities.
Israel made one such attempt to control aid organizations in Gaza in 2016 when it arrested Mohammad El Halabi, the executive director of World Vision International, one of the largest INGOs operating in Gaza. Israel falsely accused him of diverting millions of dollars from his organization’s development funds to Hamas and of providing materials for Hamas to build tunnels. Once arrested, he was pressured to provide information to the Israeli authorities and to confess that World Vision was collaborating with Hamas. Halabi resisted these overtures and insisted that the accusations against him and his organization were false. World Vision closed its Gaza operations and conducted an extensive investigation, which found no evidence of any diversion of funds or transfer of materials to Hamas. Halabi, however, remained in prison and endured an epic trial that lasted more than six years and included more than 160 court hearings, many held in secrecy. He was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail. He was released as part of a recent Israel-Hamas hostage/prisoner exchange, but the case is pending appeal as he continues to maintain his innocence.
In order to implement its new Gaza food distribution plan, Israel has ordered all INGOs to re-register with COGAT. All of the international organizations working in Gaza have issued strong statements rejecting the plan and refusing to re-register. One of the largest food providers in Gaza, the World Central Kitchen, recently ran out of food and closed its kitchen and bakery. It had served more than 130 million meals in Gaza and baked 26 million loaves of bread, but no longer has any supplies inside Gaza to continue its work. In April 2024, seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli strike, which the IDF later claimed was a tragic accident.
Who Is Supposed to Implement the Plan?
Israel has stated that it will not allow UNRWA to distribute food in Gaza and claims that the IDF itself will not carry out the distribution but will only control the perimeter of the distribution hubs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in a May 21 press conference that Israel would create a “sterile zone” in southern Gaza “totally free of Hamas” for the civilian population to receive aid. Media reports reveal that within the “sterile zone,” Israel has set up four distribution hubs, all located near IDF installations, and that Gazans must cross Israeli military lines and undergo Israeli screening and vetting before being allowed to enter the hubs, which armed US contractors under Israeli control will secure. Private contractors also will transport aid in armored vehicles from Israel into Gaza. Several organizations, including GHF, have been contracted to distribute the food inside the hubs. Under international pressure, Israel has recently been forced to allow about one hundred trucks to enter Gaza, and has launched its new aid system amidst chaos and violence. On May 26, Jake Wood, GHF’s executive director, announced his resignation, citing his doubts that he could perform his mission while adhering to humanitarian principles.
International law obligates an occupying power to provide for the basic needs of the civilian population under its control. Israel denies that it is subject to this obligation by claiming that it is not actually “occupying” Gaza. Yet its requirement is clear. However, Israel not only fails to meet it, but actively prevents others from providing food and other basic humanitarian goods. This is a clear violation of international law, a crime against humanity, and a moral outrage. It also violates US laws that prohibit the provision of US aid to a government committing such violations. The US administration should pressure Israel to end this policy rather than backing or participating in the launch of this new inhumane, illegal plan, but that seems unlikely.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Anas Mohammed
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