Failure, Fatalities and Falsehood: The Dire Legacy of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

E. Mark Windle 2 January 2026

From a chronological perspective, my previous book The Hundred Year Hunger ended tracking events in Gaza with its publication during Spring 2025. At that point, Trump’s idea of a US takeover of Gaza was being proposed, and a separate “Arab Plan” for reconstruction under discussion in Cairo. Meanwhile, over 90% of women and children were unable to meet their nutritional needs, and the Israeli blockade was an ever-present barrier to receiving food aid.

It’s a safe bet that even those exposed to the most limited or biased news outlets are aware the Gaza story is constantly unfolding—including the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians since the empty declaration of a ceasefire in October last year. It was inevitable then that a follow-up book was on the cards. Some key points of reference to continue the timeline of nutritional welfare issues were needed, though the search was not difficult. One was the announcement in August 2025 that famine was occurring in the northern Gaza governate and was likely to spread to other regions within weeks.

Another major topic was the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israeli-US enterprise that marketed promises of improving Palestinian welfare through a new way of aid delivery, but whose activities were plagued by suspicion and controversy from the outset. In all things Gaza, there exists cycles of claim and counterclaim, perpetuated by falsification, ambiguity and—largely due to restrictions of access for international journalists—difficulties in fact-checking. The history of the GHF has escaped none of that.

Motives for control of aid handling

While much of the GHF origin story remains a mystery (including some of its funding sources), there is no dispute over its backing by Israel and the US. Nor is any secret made of the strained relationship between Israel and the United Nations or its associated bodies. An obvious demonstration of this has been Israel’s ban of UNRWA: one of the first agencies to support the diaspora created at the beginning of the Nakba in the 1940s.

Israel’s constant narrative used in defence of its blockade on Gaza and the stranglehold on aid agencies through border closure is that the presence of Hamas necessitates these steps. That extends to control of aid handling. Israel claims that Hamas regularly intercepts and acquires goods from UN trucks enroute or at aid sites. The UN and others deny this is a significant problem. The concept of an Israeli-US backed distribution venture has also been viewed by many as a blatant attempt to polish Israel’s global image and to override existing UN / UNRWA work.

GHF structure and operational plan

In February 2025, the GHF was officially registered as a private company in Delaware. The following month, US and Israeli government officials confirmed establishment of the GHF, with a structure involving US private security contractors Safe Reach Solutions, UG Solutions, and the Boston Consulting Group. The first Executive Director, Jake Woods, was appointed, only to resign after two weeks. In his opinion the GHF’s objectives did not have fundamental humanitarian principles at their core. ^{1, 2}

The plan included four centralised distribution hubs, in contrast to the UN’s 400. These were located at Rafah, Tal al-Sultan, Khan Younis and Wadi Gaza. Three were in the south—where there was already a strong Israeli military presence, and prior evacuation orders had cleared the immediate area of civilians. IDF soldiers and armed US security personnel were positioned at or near hubs.

Aid supply would occur once or twice per month, at specific times announced online. By May, and with the promise of delivering aid to more than one million civilians within a week, the GHF commenced its sessions to deliver pre-packed food items, hygiene and medical kits.

Food parcel contents and nutritional adequacy

By late July 2025, the GHF claimed it had provided 91 million meals. These were primarily as standard food parcels, though the organisation didn’t publicly share a description of the contents until two months later. Since Gaza was still largely off-limits to international journalists, Kevin Nguyen and Alex Murray reported on the packages for BBC Verify using the images supplied, additional information from the GHF, and commentary from nutritional experts. ³

Images posted on a GHF social media account were of mainly dried foods which required water and fuel to cook such as pasta, various beans, split peas, chickpeas and flour. In addition, cooking oil, salt, sesame paste and ready-to-eat foods (halva snack bars rather than meal items) were provided.

BBC Verify were provided with information on weights and basic nutritional content. Each aid box weighed 19.5kg and provided a total of 42,500 kcal, estimated to be enough to feed 5.5 people for half a week. The GHF stated that potatoes and onions were also being delivered, though no detail on quantities were provided.

Relevant experts were consulted by BBC Verify on nutritional adequacy. It was accepted that the parcels could be a means of attending to the immediate challenge of limiting the rapid development of acute malnutrition from a caloric perspective. Beyond that however, parcels provided inadequate cover for various vitamin, mineral and trace elements. Professor Stuart Gordon from the London School of Economics felt that near-exclusive reliance on food packages could exacerbate existing levels of anaemia and scurvy. Associate Professor Andrew Seal, University College London, added that levels were inadequate in respect of calcium, zinc, iron, vitamin C and some B vitamins.

An overriding issue was the availability of potable water, and not only for drinking use. Without water for cooking purposes, the supply of dried foods itself a failed concept.

Calls for GHF closure

Multiple NGOs expressed concerns with how the GHF was rolling out distributions and case reports of violence. A UN press release in August 2025 highlighted concerns from Francesca Albanese and ten other Special Rapporteurs that Israel, as a backer of the GHF was abandoning its legal responsibility under the Geneva Convention to fully protect Gazan civilians during aid sessions. ⁴ In the first two months of opening, 859 people had been killed at or near GHF hubs.

The UN commented that the GHF were not accounting for the needs of the most vulnerable. Women, children, the elderly and those with disabilities were likely to be physically unable to make the journey due to site centralisation. In another communication, UNICEF pointed out that the weight of GHF aid boxes was an obvious limitation for children and the weak unable to carry heavy loads by hand over long distances. ⁵

Closure and the GHF impact report

By Autumn was a shift in dynamics of the conflict, at least in terms of rhetoric, and operations were shut down. Within the detail of the ceasefire agreement effective from 10 October 2025, a clause stated aid distribution was to fall back to the UN and other recognised agencies, for reasons undisclosed. Critics postulated those as being international pressure, the now globally visible failure of GHF as another factor in the downward spiral of Israel’s PR image, and an unwillingness on anyone’s part to continue funding an outfit with monthly expenses of over 140 million US dollars. ⁶

Indeed, beyond initial cash injection from the US and a mysterious donor (rumoured to be Israel itself), struggles regarding financing were a running theme. Also relevant to ceasefire arrangements, three GHF hubs would sit by default inside new no-go areas for Palestinians, meaning there would be the need for closure and re-establishment elsewhere.

Even post-closure of the GHF came the inevitable kind of obdurate denial now normalised by the Israeli government, the IDF and complicit nations. The impact report published in November 2025 ⁷ and available via the GHF website has been viewed by many as demonstration in institutional whitewashing. In it, Executive Director John Acree proclaimed that the organisation had built “an alternative model that worked—one that saved lives and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza” and referred to “a successful mission… (that) laid the groundwork for a ceasefire and for the future of Gaza”.

The tone throughout the rest of the report was that of hubs being places of calm and exuberant appreciation from civilians who attended them. Other claims followed:

• GHF was never intended to be a long-term solution, but a temporary bridge
• During its 4.5 months run, 187 million meals were delivered, reaching “tens of thousands of people each day (and) built the trust of the people we served”
• Three million food boxes were delivered
• Hubs were clearly marked for civilians
• GHF repeatedly invited coordination with UN agencies and international NGOs to combine and coordinate efforts
• No truck-diversion or looting incidents occurred
• GHF collaborated with Samaritan’s Purse medical teams to provide maternal and infant care at the sites

Assuming GHF’s pride on its real-time tracking, formal accounting and audit systems was justified, some of the statistics may be interpreted as accurate. According to one report however, there were questionable elements of its quality assurance processes. ⁸ It was also true that the UN and other agencies refused to work with the GHF. However, as vocalised by these groups, the desire was stronger to avoid complicity in actions that put civilians in physical danger, and which ignored basic humanitarian principles. The GHF collaboration with Samaritan’s Purse to provide medical support at the sites did occur, although this was on a very small scale, using a six-member team of paramedics and nurses across all GHF sites. ⁹

BBC Panorama documentary “Dying for Food”

Other aspects, including the physical ease of civilians to reach the sites and the visibility of hubs and their boundaries, were in complete contrast to what had been uncovered a couple of months earlier. Presented by BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen, the TV documentary “Gaza: Dying for Food” aired its investigation of the GHF on 22 September 2025. ¹⁰  Panorama used a combination of direct witness interviews, commissioned Palestinian freelancers already inside Gaza, and analysed satellite images, camera stills and video footage. Statistics and reported facts were verified with independent and reliable sources as far as possible.

Key findings from the programme reinforced concerns already made by Francesca Albanese and colleagues, and provided additional compelling indictments:

• The few available GHF hubs (and closure of the first site within 3 weeks) meant extremely long journeys on foot were necessary, often causing frustration and desperation by the time civilians reached the hubs.
• Bowen interviewed an Israeli soldier present at one of the GHF sites during the summer of 2025. The witness reported that opening times at the hubs would alter every day. Civilians would need to have online access to social media to be aware of the times. The amount of notice given was often very short.
• The soldier commented that crowds were often hungry and in a frenzy. Soldiers were ordered to fire warning shots to hold back the crowd until the allotted opening time. Green and red lines marked the hub perimeters. Green lines were where warning shots were to be fired. Soldiers were permitted to use lethal force if anyone crossed the red line. The soldier also noted that the sites were so badly planned that lines were not always clear to civilians, and shooting was often random and uncontrolled.
• When the BBC approached senior IDF representatives about the use of red and green lines and indiscriminate shooting, these points were not addressed, other than confirming some civilians were harmed and that lessons were learned.
• GHF officials had claimed sites could potentially open for up to five hours at a time. However, BBC analysis of schedules and related resources indicated that the maximum time any site was open for was 46 minutes. The average across all distribution episodes was 12 minutes.
• A Palestinian boy named Abdullah was shot (along with 18 others on the same day) at one particular hub, more than 500 metres from the perimeter and outside the site entrance. Panorama’s analysis of camera footage confirmed gunfire came from the direction of the site, which was under complete control of Israeli forces at the time. Despite this, the IDF denied any civilians were deliberately shot or killed.
• An NHS vascular surgeon who had treated hundreds of gunshot wounds at Nassar Hospital was frequently told by patients and accompanying individuals that the injuries were caused by GHF security personnel or the IDF shooting directly into the crowds.
• An unidentified GHF whistleblower who worked and filmed secretly at a number of hubs described how people tended to gather before site opens to get in front of the surge for food. Many GHF contracted staff were former US soldiers and would routinely fire warning shots without justification. Civilians would frequently be referred to in a derogatory manner as the shooting intensified.

Panorama approached an Israeli Ambassador and IDF senior representatives for a response to the programme’s findings. Both declined to be interviewed. Independently of the Panorama programme, other BBC investigative journalism has captured further witness accounts and reports of indiscriminate shooting at various GHF hubs, which Isreal and the GHF continued to either deny or blame Hamas.

As expected, pro-Israel lobbyists quickly registered their complaints. One claim of biased journalism which leaned disproportionately on Palestinian-sourced data. Another was the programme’s selective use of data from the US-led Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), while ignoring eye-witness reports—also from ACLED—that Hamas and “unidentified Palestinian gunmen” were responsible for some deaths near distribution centres. ¹¹ Of course, it is critically important to determine the nature of all shootings that occurred at or near all sites. The reality is that a truly comprehensive, objective exploration of events will only occur in a legal setting, and primarily through accumulated testimony—if indeed investigations of accountability ever reach a court. There is one known: statistics indicate that civilians were more likely to be killed or injured at one of the four GHF hubs than at hundreds of UN sites.

Quite apart from the use of militarisation and its lethal consequences, was the GHF even effective in getting food to the Gazan population? According to a fund approval review by USAID, GHF’s risk management plan lacked guarantees that the stated amount of aid would actually reach the intended recipients. ⁸ The limitations of operations also speak for themselves. Extreme centralisation of a service that reduces accessibility for the masses; particularly for the most vulnerable. Poorly planned food box content. Little notice of site opening times. A requirement to receive social media notifications in an environment; where, in some regions, power and communications are scarce. Extremely short open sessions.

On the subject of actual food delivered, the GHF previously claimed that it had delivered up to 8,000 boxes of food within a few hours. Other agencies consider this as fantasy. Even those well versed in aid handling dispense 500-1,000 boxes at best in one day. Multiple unrelated eyewitnesses at the Rafah site reported a typical amount of five or six pallets of boxes at most, again casting doubt on GHF efficiency claims. There is even ambiguity over extrapolation of parcel contents to an equivalent number of “meals” provided, since they were unprepared and mainly dried carbohydrate staple items, with very little protein content. ¹²

Given the GHF’s contribution to human rights breaches and the need for accountability, its closure brings only limited solace. At least failings have been publicly exposed by diverse sources: NGOs, Palestinian civilians, nutrition experts, whistleblowers, journalists and objective forensic analysis. The GHF isn’t the first expensive failure which provided little alleviation in the suffering of the Palestinian people. In 2024, a $240 million US floating pier project promised significant aid delivery but ended up being partly used for military means and supplied the equivalent of one day’s food before the idea was abandoned. The GHF model is now also assigned to the bin. The fear is what will be next. 

References

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3. Nguyden K and Murray A. What is inside the GHF food aid box being distributed in Gaza? BBC Verify [Internet]. 2025 Jul 26 [cited 2025 Dec 23]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd787er1qz4o
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7. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Impact Report. November 2025 [PDF] [cited 2025 Dec 20]. Available from: https://ghf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gaza-Humanitarian-Impact-Report-November-2025.pdf
8. Abou-Ghazala Y and Hansler J. CNN. July 8, 2025. USAID review raised ‘critical concerns’ over Gaza aid group days before $30 million US grant. CNN [Internet]. 2025 Jul 8 [cited 2025 Dec 30]. Available from: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/08/us/usaid-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israel-grant
9. Shimron Y. Samaritan’s Purse Joins Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s Aid Efforts in Gaza. Ministry Watch [Internet]. 2025 Aug 25 [cited 2025 Dec 30]. Available from: https://ministrywatch.com/samaritans-purse-joins-gaza-humanitarian-foundations-aid-efforts-in-gaza/
10. BBC Panorama. Gaza: Dying for Food [Documentary]. BBC One. 2025 Sep 22 [cited 2025 Dec 30]. Available from: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002jxm2/panorama-gaza-dying-for-food
11. How the BBC lost the Public’s Trust—One Gaza Documentary at a Time. Conservative Post [Internet]. 2025 Oct 5 [cited 2025 Dec 30]. Available from: https://conservativepost.co.uk/how-the-bbc-lost-the-publics-trust-one-gaza-documentary-at-a-time/
12. Bronte TD and Pires LS. Scarce, poor in nutrition, and very difficult to cook: The mirage of food aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. El País [Internet]. 2025 Jun 9 [cited 2025 Dec 31]. Available from: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-06-09/scarce-poor-in-nutrition-and-very-difficult-to-cook-the-mirage-of-food-aid-from-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation.html