A controversial distribution group of new aid supported by the United States and Israel began working in Gaza.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said that truck charges had been delivered to secure sites and that it had started to distribute to people. He did not say where or how much aid had been distributed.
The group, which uses armed American security entrepreneurs, aims to bypass the UN as a main aid provider for 2.1 million Gaza Palestinians, where experts warn against an imminent famine after an Israeli blockade which lasted 11 weeks.
The UN and many aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF’s plans, which say they contradict humanitarian principles and seem to “arm aid”.
Israel says that a new system is necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing aid, which the group denies.
In a statement sent to journalists on Monday evening, GHF announced that it had “started its operations in Gaza” and delivered “truck food charges to its secure distribution sites, where distribution to the Gazan people began”.
“More trucks with aid will be delivered (Tuesday), the help flow increasing every day,” he added.
Document photos have shown a little more than a dozen men carrying boxes of an unpertured location.
The BBC asked GHF how many aid trucks have arrived and how many people have been able to take help, but it has not yet received an answer.
The GHF declaration also said that John Acere, a former USAID senior manager – the American government agency responsible for the foreign aid administration – had been appointed acting executive director.
Acree succeeds Jake Wood, who resigned from the post on Sunday. Wood said that the group’s help distribution system could not work in a way that would be able to achieve the principles of “humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence”.
The GHF board of directors rejected criticism, accusing “those who benefit from the status quo” of being more concentrated on “tearing it away than on the aid”.
He said the system was fully consistent with humanitarian principles and would feed a million Palestinians by the end of the week.
As part of the GHF mechanism, Palestinians in safety will have to collect boxes containing food and basic hygiene items for their families from a small number of distribution sites that are mainly in southern Gaza. The sites will be provided by American entrepreneurs, Israeli troops patrolling the perimeters.
The UN and other aid agencies insisted that they do not cooperate with any regime that does not respect fundamental humanitarian principles.
They have warned that the GHF system almost excludes mobility problems, including those with injury, disability and the elderly, are more traveling, expose thousands of people to harm, make conditional aid to political and military objectives and set an unacceptable precedent to help childbirth.
They said they had thousands of trucks waiting to go to Gaza and that a detailed plan to ensure that help arrives at people in need and looting is minimized.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the BBC on Monday that the GHF was “militarized, privatized, politicized” and “not in accordance with neutrality”.
“The people behind it are military-they are ex-CIA and former soldiers … Let’s go back to the system that worked,” he said.
Hamas warned the Palestinians not to cooperate with the GHF system, claiming that it “would replace the order with chaos, would apply a policy of famine of engineering of Palestinian civilians and would use food as a weapon during the war”.
GHF’s statement condemned what she said to be “Hamas’ death threats targeting aid groups supporting humanitarian operations on GHF’s safe distribution sites and efforts to prevent the Gazan people from accessing the aid to the sites”.
Israel imposed a total blockade for humanitarian aid in Gaza on March 2 and resumed its military offensive two weeks later, ending a two-month-old ceasefire with Hamas.
He said the stages had to put pressure on the armed group to release the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, of which up to 23 are supposed to be alive.
On May 19, the Israeli army launched an enlarged offensive which, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would see the troops “taking control of all regions” of Gaza. The plan would completely include cleaning northern civilians and move them with force to the south.
Netanyahu also said that Israel would authorize a “basic” quantity of food in Gaza to prevent famine according to the pressure of allies in the United States.
Since then, the Israeli authorities have said they have granted at least 665 charges of humanitarian aid trucks, including flour, baby food and medical supplies in Gaza.
However, the head of the United Nations World Food Program warned on Sunday that help was only a “drop in the bucket” of what was necessary in the territory to reverse the catastrophic levels of hunger, in the midst of important shortages of staple food and rowing.
Half a million people face famine in the coming months, according to an assessment of the classification of the integrated food security phase supported by the UN (IPC).
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the cross -border attack in Hamas on October 7, 2023, during which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 53,977 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 3,822 since Israel resumed its offensive 10 weeks ago, according to the Ministry of Health managed by Hamas in the territory.
