The Rising Death Toll of the U.S.–Israel Aid Distribution Plan in Gaza
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Palestinians carry boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed organization approved by Israel, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on May 27, 2025. Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
When the Trump administration unveiled its plan to put a fledgling nonprofit with no humanitarian track record in charge of distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza earlier this month, the outcry among aid groups was widespread.
Under the plan, which has the backing of the U.S. and Israeli governments, civilians would be concentrated into southern Gaza in so-called 'sterile zones' controlled by the Israeli military. The new nonprofit, led by a former U.S. Marine, would be the sole distributor of aid from a handful of locations. American contractors would provide security, including one group run by a former senior CIA officer.
The humanitarian community worried the Israeli government would use the new aid plan as a weapon against Palestinians, who are currently facing mass starvation under Israel's 11-week blockade. Some aid experts likened the zones to a 'concentration camp' or an 'internment camp,' saying the plan would further displace Palestinians. Some Israeli officials said they hoped the plan would permanently expel Palestinians from Gaza.
Such fears proved prescient Tuesday, when the aid plan, led by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, went forward in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood of Al-Mawasi, Rafah. Thousands of Palestinians were forced to walk miles to the site, where the large crowds packed into fenced-off corridors as private American security contractors, armed with assault rifles, guarded boxes of aid.
During the distribution, guards initially subjected recipients to intense searches but later loosened security, two sources monitoring the distribution told The Intercept.
At that point, the crowd began to storm the distribution site, attempting to receive the aid. Gunfire rang out at the site, prompting crowds to flee. At least three people were killed and 47 others were injured amid the gunfire and overcrowding conditions, according to reports citing Gaza officials. An additional six people were killed and 15 others were wounded by gunfire on Wednesday while attempting to receive aid at a site north of Rafah, according to officials. Elsewhere in the strip, in the Qizan Rashwan area, airstrikes killed six who were headed further south to receive aid, officials also said on Wednesday.
Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor confirmed on Tuesday the death of one individual and said the 47 injured were wounded by bullets fired by both Israeli military and the U.S.-based private security firms. The group said Israeli military soldiers had entered the site to fire on the crowd. The monitor relied on its field researchers who confirmed the wounded had been seen at Al-Najjar Hospital and a Red Cross hospital. The group also received reports from three families who said their loved ones had left to get aid at the distribution hub but never returned.
'Aid is being used as a weapon, not a lifeline.'
Videos posted to social media showed thousands of people rushing toward the distribution site. The crowds scrambled away for safety along dirt trenches and downed fences as gunfire rang out, footage shows. In one video, a man dragging a box of aid behind him said he had walked more than six miles to the distribution site, where he watched a young man killed in front of him.
'This is what happens when you try to replace the humanitarian system with a political agenda,' said Abdalwahab Hamad, Gaza office manager for the Palestinian humanitarian group Juhoud. 'Those thousands of Palestinians, starving and desperate, stormed the distribution center, not because they're violent, not because that people are hungry, but because aid is being used as a weapon, not a lifeline.'
In a statement to The Intercept, the Israeli military disputed field reports and downplayed any mention of violence, saying its soldiers had 'fired warning shots in the area outside the compound' before gaining control of the site.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation did not immediately respond to The Intercept's requests for comment. The foundation told other outlets its armed security did not fire on the crowd but 'fell back' when the crowd ran toward the aid before returning to the site.
Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry, minimized Tuesday's chaos, claiming the foundation had delivered 8,000 packages of aid to Palestinians, posting images of cardboard boxes filled with flour, pasta, and oil. 'Humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, not to Hamas,' he captioned the photo posted on social media.
The pretext for this new aid distribution regime is the theory, espoused by Israel and the American government, that Hamas has been stealing aid to enrich itself and control the people of Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the unsubstantiated claim on Tuesday during the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Conference, saying that he needed to move Gaza's population to the south 'for its own protection' from Hamas.
Neither Israel nor the U.S. has provided evidence to support such claims.
Israel, however, has weaponized access to aid throughout the current war on Gaza, and the practice stretches back to at least the 1990s, but intensified in 2007 once Hamas was elected to control the Strip. The practice continued throughout Israel's latest invasion into the Strip after Hamas's October 7 attacks.
Since Israel imposed its latest total blockade on Gaza on March 2, famine risk has spread across the region, with 1 in 5 Palestinians in Gaza facing starvation. More than 9,000 children have already been treated for acute malnutrition this year. Over the past week, 29 children and elderly people have suffered starvation-related deaths, Gaza health officials said.
During the first week of Israel's latest offensive, code-named Operation Gideon's Chariots, more than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced, the United Nations said. More than 600 Palestinians have also been killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Just as the new assault launched, Netanyahu announced the government would allow 'minimal' or a 'basic amount' of aid into Gaza to avoid further international backlash. After U.N.-led groups were able to deliver small amounts of aid to Palestinians, some World Food Programme bakeries in southern Gaza reopened last week, only to close again after three days due to a shortage of flour.
Ramy Abdu, chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the watchdog that has tracked and opposed Israel's targeting of civilians in Gaza, said the recent restrictions on aid evoked a 2008 Israeli military study which calculated the precise minimum number of calories a Palestinian needed to avoid malnutrition, which critics said was proof the government had been illegally limiting aid into the territory.
'We are talking about starvation or hunger management and/or hunger engineering,' Abdu said, 'which in the end serves the Israeli agenda and purposes.'
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Israel's aid plan sidesteps the United Nations, which has a staff of more than 13,000 workers in Gaza and has been largely responsible for delivering supplies to Palestinians throughout Israel's war in Gaza. Aid groups criticized the plan, saying they did not want to be complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinians.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, had been headed by a former U.S. Marine sniper Jake Wood, who led aid missions to Haiti and other disaster sites around the world with his other organization, Team Rubicon. Wood resigned earlier this week before the new plan went into effect, saying the foundation would not be able to adhere 'to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.'
GHF, which is operating on $100 million in funding, pressed forward on Monday without Wood, loading up its aid hubs for distribution on Tuesday. Armed contractors with private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions, based in Wyoming, and UG Solutions, based in North Carolina, manned the aid sites. Safe Reach Solutions is led by Philip F. Reilly, a former CIA officer who trained right-wing Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s and deployed early to Afghanistan in 2001, eventually becoming station chief in Kabul before moving to the private sector, according to a New York Times investigation.
'You cannot replace a humanitarian system with a checkpoint and expect peace.'
Hamad called Tuesday's incident 'a punishment dressed as a charity' and called on the Israeli government to allow the U.N. to retake control of the aid distribution process.
'Aid in Gaza should not be political, it should not be conditional. It only works when it is protected, when it is neutral, and is being led by organizations such as the United Nations,' Hamad said, adding that Palestinians in Gaza have built trust with U.N.-backed groups and that the U.N. already has the infrastructure to clearly identify and address needs.
'You cannot replace a humanitarian system with a checkpoint and expect peace,' he said, 'because this is a military-controlled charity, and people have been there just out of desperation.' Join The Conversation
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