UNnecessary? Private companies are tackling Gaza’s humanitarian crisis

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With Gaza’s infrastructure lying in ruins, one of the main challenges facing the wider world is providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population of the Strip. The distribution of aid poses a particular problem, as Israel's critics and opponents have been accusing the Jewish state of obstructing efforts to alleviate human suffering. Ostensibly, Israel is trying to “artificially create” hunger and shortages of essential goods in Gaza. A textbook example of the above was the attempt by the “selfie yacht” Madleen to “break the Gaza blockade” — with activist Greta Thunberg on board.

The essence of the issue at hand is the need to provide for the population while preventing criminal groups or terrorist organizations like Hamas from hijacking the humanitarian effort — something that happened on a wide scale in Gaza in the past. Another challenge is that, for Israel, international organizations have discredited themselves, thus forcing a shift toward experimenting with new approaches.

Traditional aid

In recent years, humanitarian aid has most often been delivered by international organizations, and less frequently by non-governmental organizations and individual national governments. Funding for their projects and operations typically comes from voluntary contributions by third parties — government agencies, NGOs, organizations, foundations, corporations, and private individuals.

The leading organizations in this field today include UN agencies (such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, and UNICEF), the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and NGOs such as the International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam International, IsraAID, and CARE. Another key actor is the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.

Despite the diversity in their affiliations, mandates, and methods, humanitarian organizations face at least one common problem: to ensure that at least some of the aid reaches those in need, they are forced to cooperate with official authorities on the ground — or, in their absence, with de facto powers, regardless of how corrupt or criminal these powers are. For years, the Gaza Strip has presented a particularly acute dilemma.

According to Hamas documents discovered during the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, looting and theft of humanitarian aid were among the main sources of income for the terrorist organization. The documents reveal that Hamas militants joined humanitarian convoys in order to seize supplies intended for civilians — and to profit from their resale.

Since October 7, 2023, Hamas is estimated to have appropriated between 15% and 25% of the humanitarian goods entering Gaza. These supplies were not only sold but also distributed among militants and activists working with the terrorist organization.

Another source of income for the Islamists involved smuggling cigarettes and other banned goods, which were concealed among humanitarian aid shipments. Additionally, Hamas used its Turkish branch as an intermediary to transfer hundreds of millions of shekels from Iran and other sources disguised as direct international humanitarian aid. Although this aid flowed into Gaza as part of the general supply, in practice it was entirely captured by the terrorist group. On top of that, Hamas militants engaged in racketeering, extorting payments from a range of sources — humanitarian aid suppliers, traders, and small businesses — in exchange for “ensuring their security.”

Overall, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the terrorist group has taken in hundreds of millions of dollars from humanitarian aid during the latest Gaza war alone. In this context, Israel believes that the suspension of humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip by international organizations in early March 2025 significantly reduced Hamas’s income, causing the group serious financial difficulties.

The authenticity of the documents obtained by the Israelis, along with the estimates they contained, was confirmed to The Wall Street Journal by intelligence officials from several Arab countries. Hamas declined to comment, while the United Nations pushed back by stating that “Israel is exaggerating the extent of the theft.”

Meanwhile, Israel holds UN agencies responsible for what it sees as de facto collaboration with Hamas. One of the UN’s best-funded agencies, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), was forced to actively cooperate with Hamas after the militant group took control of the Gaza Strip in 2006, treating them as the de facto authorities in the territory. Israel argues that this humanitarian-focused UN agency has effectively become a key element of the radical Islamist regime’s “civilian” infrastructure. As a result, Israel has banned its operations.

Additionally, complaints have been voiced against other international organizations. After Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, organizations like the Red Cross accused Israel of “humanitarian crimes” but failed to secure meetings with the captured hostages — many of whom were women, children, the sick, and the elderly. Citing their “neutral status,” such organizations often refrained from condemning Hamas for the October 7 massacre, limiting their interventions to what Israel could only interpret as weak calls for the hostages’ release.

A quest for new mechanisms

Having removed international organizations from the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu stated that he is “ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel's security.”

The discussion centered on finding an alternative to the inefficient, politically unbalanced, and often corrupt “incumbent” players that have monopolized the vast market of international humanitarian services. However, at that time, Netanyahu’s statement sounded more like a declaration of intent than a concrete plan. Its implementation did not begin until after Donald Trump returned to the White House.

After Trump's idea of relocating Gaza’s residents en masse to “more comfortable and livable” areas faded into the background, discussions shifted toward options for delivering humanitarian aid directly to the population of the Strip, bypassing Hamas.

The plan, coordinated between the U.S. and Israel and presented in early May, proposes entrusting this mission to private companies operating under U.S. auspices. To mobilize funds and oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Strip, a special fund was to be established, supported by governments and charities. The program’s sponsors also expressed hope that UN agencies and international aid organizations would join the new mechanism, ensuring that aid would be delivered directly to the people in need.

The experience with implementing private humanitarian support projects is still limited. One such example is Fogbow, a company that positions itself as a “trusted and independent partner to public and private entities in the humanitarian space” and offers “end-to-end solutions for complex logistics challenges.” Its team members mostly have military backgrounds and/or many years of experience working in government agencies and the private sector.

Brook Jerue, CEO of Fogbow and a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot, believes that the team's military experience helps them devise innovative solutions showcased in the company's past projects. For one, Fogbow proposed transporting food to Gaza by sea to alleviate congestion at land crossings. Traditional humanitarian organizations sharply criticized this idea, fearing it would weaken political pressure on Israel. Currently, they are responding similarly in the famine-stricken, civil war-torn provinces of South Sudan.

The demand for such services — especially amid the rollback of certain government programs (such as USAID) and cuts to aid budgets worldwide — is linked, according to Fogbow president Mick Mulroy (former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration), to donors’ difficulty in finding partners and solutions within traditional systems. While expressing a willingness to operate within the existing system, Fogbow’s leadership nonetheless believes that they could achieve more by using new, independent mechanisms — an assessment supported by the company’s portfolio, which includes five requests for humanitarian projects in conflict zones across Africa and the Middle East.

This vision is shared by the founders of the U.S.-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). According to the approved plan — believed to be the brainchild of Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff and Netanyahu advisor Ron Dermer — a network of secure distribution sites is being established in the south of the Gaza Strip under the foundation’s auspices, with plans to expand northward as hostilities subside.

Local families can come to these sites once a week to receive a food package and essential supplies, which are intended to be sufficient to last until their next visit seven days later.

Under the agreement, Israel assumed responsibility for funding and carrying out the engineering work to build the infrastructure for the aid distribution sites, while private American firms UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions are in charge of logistics and planning. The IDF is responsible for overall security. However, contrary to what was proposed in an earlier plan it does not participate in the delivery or distribution of humanitarian aid.

In parallel, a system was established to control the import of essential goods. It includes measures for the registration of organizations, sanctions against violators, customs procedures, and inspections at crossing points. This complex framework was designed in order to ensure that food and supplies reach the residents of Gaza directly — while fully excluding Hamas and other terrorist groups from the humanitarian aid supply chain.

However, not everyone believes the system has been a success. In the very first days, it failed to handle the surge of aid seekers, with locals reportedly overwhelming and even tearing down some distribution sites. In addition, Israel’s critics have widely circulated footage that allegedly shows Israeli forces firing at unarmed Palestinians trying to reach the aid centers. The experiment has also drawn criticism from leaders of traditional humanitarian organizations, which see initiatives like the GHF as a threat to their hold on what remains a lucrative share of the international humanitarian aid market.

A standard set of arguments from these critics includes accusations that Israel is “weaponizing aid” for military objectives, that the direct distribution of food to civilians has very limited impact, that the traditional system “works best,” and that the aid distribution model used by the U.S.-Israeli foundation “invites danger because you have the mass movement of people.”

These claims are voiced most strongly by entities affiliated with UN programs, which have refused to work with the foundation, citing its alleged lack of neutrality. While agreeing that any aid to those in need is welcome, critics imply that “professionals” are better equipped than “amateurs” to handle the catastrophic situation in Gaza, which they say is now the worst it’s been since the war began.

Pressure on GHF has had a tangible effect. In addition to the refusal of international humanitarian organizations to cooperate with the private group, several senior staff members left the foundation in early June, and an important logistics partner, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), severed ties with the project. Nevertheless, during its first week of operation, the foundation issued 7 million individual food rations to residents in southern Gaza — as planned — and even announced the opening of a new distribution point in the northern part of the Strip.

As could be expected, another party strongly opposed to the foundation's involvement is Hamas, which is rapidly losing both its hold on the population and its funding for terrorist activities. Hamas activists launched an intimidation campaign, warning residents not to approach the food distribution centers. When tens of thousands of Gazans ignored the threats and flocked to these centers on opening day, militants attempted to disrupt the process with gunfire, resulting in dozens of casualties. The foundation’s staff were forced to suspend operations temporarily, but they fully resumed their efforts the very next day.

In the days that followed, Hamas continued to use the same tactic, attempting to shift the blame for the inevitable casualties onto the IDF or rival clan-based Arab gangs. Several of these, such as the Bedouin Tarabins residing in Rafah and on the Egyptian side of Sinai, have been gaining strength locally thanks to the decline of Hamas. However, the success of these manipulations, which were readily picked up by foreign media, was limited. The terrorists then directed their threats at the foundation’s staff, who continued distributing food boxes “hand to hand.”

The path from threats to action was alarmingly short: on June 12, a bus carrying locally hired GHF workers to a distribution center in the southern part of the Strip was attacked by a group of Hamas militants. Eight people were killed and several others wounded. Hamas representatives claimed that the victims belonged to their local rivals — the Abu Shabab militia, allegedly armed by Israel — but this claim was immediately denied both by GHF and by Abu Shabab itself.

An appeal from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation chairman Johnnie Moore to UN Secretary-General António Guterres followed. In his letter, Moore called on the UN to stop supporting the disinformation campaign, to condemn Hamas’s killing of GHF staff, to acknowledge the effectiveness of the private company’s operational model, and to begin equal cooperation.

Implications on the ground

Regardless of criticism and challenges, the work of the private U.S.-Israeli foundation in the Gaza Strip alleviates Israel of two major problems. First, GHF takes on some of the burden of governing the Strip and meeting the needs of its population. Second, it provides an alternative to Israeli oversight, even if the terrorists are unlikely to honor any agreement about future control of Gaza.

But perhaps most importantly, the initial results of the new modus operandi in the Gaza Strip demonstrate that transferring a significant portion of the humanitarian aid market — along with related services like logistics, security, and public relations — to private companies is quite feasible. The situation has also exposed a need for reforms — or even of a complete overhaul of the international aid system as currently run by the UN and affiliated organizations.

In Gaza, we could be witnessing the emergence of a new trend capable of changing the global humanitarian landscape. There really is an alternative to the existing system of traditional humanitarian institutions, which are often plagued by bureaucracy, corruption, and forced collaboration with authoritarian regimes. Now it’s time to find out if it can work when faced with other crises in other parts of the globe.