After almost six months of operations, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has announced it will commence closure of its activity in Palestinian-held territory.
The move would complement the earlier withdrawal of three of its distribution sites, which began with the start of a lasting ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas—the first since the Hamas-led pogrom of October 7th, 2023.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Piggott took to X, formerly Twitter, and posted:
GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire.
Unusually for a nation fighting an existential war, Israel founded the GHF with U.S. support and commenced aid deliveries into Gaza. At the time, the decision reflected the reality of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) being riddled with Hamas operatives and a majority of UN aid deliveries being ‘intercepted,’ i.e. looted, by local gunmen.
GHF operations delivered around three million packages, containing the equivalent of more than 187 million meals, to Palestinians. There were also fatalities at GHF sites, often caused by stampedes or what the organisation called ‘warning shots’ fired during crowd control. In turn, the organisation faced a barrage of dubious criticism, including from BBC reports designed to blame the then-novel Israeli-backed aid body for distribution failures in Gaza.
Israel was accused of imposing a blockade that starves civilians, but when allowing in aid it was attacked again, this time for ‘weaponizing aid.’ Before long, such allegations had mutated into full-on blood libel. With the winding down of GHF operations in Gaza, Hamas ministers have now called for the agency to “not escape accountability” in a future NGO-led international prosecution they envisage—likely packed with more blood libel.
