Why the New Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Aid Model Fails Everyone

Two days ago, the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – a U.S. and Israeli-backed entity with funding from undisclosed sources – began distributing a small amount of aid in southern Gaza. Israeli officials have indicated the GHF will now be the sole mechanism for delivering desperately needed food assistance into the territory.

Israeli and U.S. officials assert that this new aid model is necessary to prevent diversion of resources to Hamas, yet there is no credible evidence that aid delivered by experienced international organizations has been diverted. Groups like Anera operate under rigorous vetting, compliance and monitoring procedures to ensure aid reaches civilians in need, not combatants.

Trusted humanitarian actors, including United Nations agencies and long-standing international non-governmental organizations like Anera have declined to participate in the GHF-led model. We have three major reasons for this decision:

1. It violates core humanitarian principles.

The GHF approach militarizes and politicizes aid delivery, undermines the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, and puts civilians and aid workers at heightened risk. GHF is sidestepping established humanitarian systems and instead coordinating with military actors and private contractors. Humanitarian assistance must never be used as a tool of control, particularly by parties within a conflict.

2. It puts civilians in harm’s way.

The GHF model concentrates distribution hubs in southern Gaza, forcing starving individuals – including the elderly, disabled, and young children if they are the most fit people left among their households – to undertake long, dangerous journeys through militarized zones to collect aid for their families. This has already resulted in chaos at the distribution centers, as was expected by veteran humanitarian aid organizations. Aid must reach people where they are. This model is not delivering relief, it is compounding despair.

3. It falls far short of meeting urgent needs.

As stated by Jonathan Whittall, Head of UNOCHA for the Palestinian territories, what’s being imposed is a system of surveillance-based rationing that normalizes deprivation by design. The GHF reportedly is bringing in just 60 aid trucks per day, a fraction of what is required to meet the basic needs of Gaza’s population. By contrast, some 3,000 trucks carrying enough food for 100 million meals have been held up around Gaza’s borders over the past three months.

Nearly every resident of Gaza is desperately hungry. From May to September 2025, the entire population is projected to face acute food insecurity, a quarter of them in famine-like conditions. At Anera’s clinics, medical staff are detecting ketones, an indicator of starvation, in over 40% of urine samples tested, the first time we have seen such cases in significant numbers since we began testing in October 2024.

Meanwhile, essential non-food relief items – including medicines, medical supplies, and hygiene kits – are also being blocked. These are supposed to flow through the normal humanitarian channels, but in reality, nothing is getting in. Clinics and hospitals, already overwhelmed and under-resourced, are running out of even the most basic treatments, antibiotics, and wound care materials. The health consequences are dire and escalating daily.

What Gaza Needs: Principled, Proven Humanitarian Access

Anera calls for immediate, unhindered humanitarian access throughout Gaza, protection of aid workers, opening of humanitarian corridors, and support for locally rooted, civilian-led aid systems. These are not just logistical necessities, they are moral imperatives. The people of Gaza deserve to be treated with humanity and dignity, not as security threats or burdens, but as human beings with the right to live and to hope.

The problem is not the capacity, will or trustworthiness of humanitarian actors – it’s access. Organizations like Anera are ready and able to scale up operations immediately, delivering millions of meals within days once given the green light.

Anera and other trusted non-governmental organizations have decades of proven success in delivering aid through robust logistical systems and local networks. Since the war began, Anera alone has delivered 65+ million meals, millions of gallons of clean water, five million treatments of medicines and 77,000+ hygiene kits – always in coordination with relevant authorities and in line with humanitarian principles.

Anera remains committed to serving Gaza’s civilians. We urge the international community to reject untested, politicized mechanisms like GHF that restrict access and instead support principled, effective, and scaled aid efforts that reach people where they are.

*** We also call for an immediate ceasefire, the safe return of Israeli hostages and Palestinians held without charges, and an end to the war and the occupation.***

Learn about what Anera has done in response to the war in Gaza >>>