Warnings Grow Over US and Israel-Backed Plan for Gaza Aid

United Nations aid officials have rejected a U.S. and Israel-backed plan for aid delivery in Gaza that reportedly involves the use of a private foundation and U.S. military security contractors to deliver far less humanitarian assistance than the besieged enclave needs.

Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned Friday that the agency "will not participate."

"There is no reason to put in place a system that is at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organization," Laerke told the BBC.

Since early March, Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza, compounding widespread misery and hunger in the besieged enclave as Israel continues to mount a deadly military campaign there. U.N. officials have decried the fact that aid is close at hand but is not being allowed in.

Speaking in Jerusalem on Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that the plan involves a private U.S.-backed foundation, which will distribute aid from a set number of distribution sites, according to CNN. Huckabee said the idea is to create a system that prevents Hamas from obtaining the aid.

The private entity, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, would administer those distribution sites using private U.S. military contractors and aid workers, according to CNN.

The plan reportedly entails only allowing 60 aid trucks a day, a sliver of what was allowed to enter the enclave during the two-month cease-fire that Israel ended in March. A document from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation states that there will initially be four distribution sites aimed at providing 1.2 million Palestinians in its first phase, or 60% of Gaza's population.

According to the The New YorkTimes, under the current aid distribution system, the U.N. says there are 400 distribution points.

Huckabee said that Israel would not be involved in delivering aid, but that Israeli forces would handle security around the distribution sites.

The Times of Israel, citing officials familiar with the plan, reported that the Israeli government and military have been involved in putting the plan together, even if the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the entity that is slated to distribute the aid.

Reporting from The Washington Post published Monday, which cited unnamed Israeli officials and aid workers, framed the emerging plan as an Israeli initiative to take control of aid distribution in Gaza. The Post's reporting also stated that the distribution centers would be all be located in the south of Gaza.

The Post spoke with officials from a dozen international aid groups working in Gaza, who expressed concerns that restricting aid to a few locations would force more displacement and be discriminatory.

James Elder, spokesperson for the U.N.'s children's agency UNICEF, echoed this, according to the BBC, saying on Friday that the proposed plan would lead to more children suffering and that the decision to locate all the distribution centers in the south appeared designed to weaponize aid as "bait" to force Palestinians to be displaced once again.

The plan "contravenes basic humanitarian principles" and appears designed to "reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic," Elder said, according to U.N. News.