US-Israeli Gaza aid agency needs $30 million to stop it collapsing

The new US-Israeli aid agency in Gaza has applied for an emergency $30 million grant from the White House to save it from collapse just one month after opening.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) claims that, since it began operating in late May, it has provided millions of meals to Palestinians in southern Gaza who the UN says have been pushed to the brink of famine by Israel's aid blockade.
Two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that the Trump administration will award the grant, adding that processing was moving forward with a fraction of the auditing usually required to grant foreign assistance to an organisation.
The funding for GHF could be one of the final acts for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) before it is absorbed into the State Department as part of Donald Trump's unprecedented foreign aid cuts.
The controversial US-Israeli organisation is the backbone of a new aid system designed to wrest distribution away from aid groups led by the UN, which Israel alleges has been infiltrated by Hamas, who it has repeatedly accused of siphoning off aid.
The new mechanism limits food distribution to four fixed sites in southern and central Gaza, all guarded by private American security contractors and Israeli soldiers.
The UN and aid groups have rejected the new system, saying that appointing itself as the main supplier of aid allows Israel to weaponise food for its military and political gain, which violates humanitarian principles.
Unicef, the UN's children fund, said the system run by GHF was 'making a desperate humanitarian situation worse'.
The collapse of water systems in Gaza is also threatening the territory with a devastating drought, with just 40 per cent of drinking water facilities still functional, Unicef said.
Nearly every day since its operations began, large crowds of desperate and hungry Palestinians have flocked to the distribution points, waiting for hours and jostling for a place in the line to get food handouts before they run-out in a matter of minutes.
Israel and the US have been criticised over near-daily shootings near the distribution points that have claimed more than 400 lives and injured 2,000 others since they opened in late May, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Footage of mass-casualty events has been shared on social media, showing people screaming as bullets rip through the crowds.
Eyewitnesses say Israeli troops, who provide an outer ring of security, regularly open fire on the hungry crowds.
On Friday, at least 24 people were killed while waiting for aid near a site in central Gaza, according to medics.
The Israeli military has denied firing on civilians. It claims it fired warning shots in several instances, and fired directly at a few 'suspects' who ignored warnings and approached its forces.
The population of Gaza has been corralled into a patchwork of isolated areas that add up to less than a fifth of the coastal territory's land area, according to a recent analysis by Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
Those wanting to reach the food distribution points must often make perilous journeys through evacuation zones, putting them at risk of being caught in the crossfire.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that under the aid mechanism, Gaza's population would eventually be moved to a 'sterile zone' in Gaza's far south, freeing Israel to fight Hamas across the rest of the enclave.
There are fears that this could be a prelude to a wider plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza in 'voluntary' migrations that aid groups and human rights organisations say would amount to forced displacement.
'We cannot take part in a system that violates humanitarian principles and risks implicating us in serious breaches of international law,' said Shaina Low, communication adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading aid group operating in the Strip.
Israel also said that once Hamas is defeated, it will implement a reconstruction plan proposed by US President Trump to relocate the territory's population outside Gaza and transform the war-ravaged enclave into a 'Riviera of the Middle East'.

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