Israel Halts Gaza Aid Deliveries as UN Appeals to Israeli Military to ‘Stop Shooting People Trying to Get Food’
Emergency Response 26/06/2025 • &
Gaza palestinians tote away food from a UN distribution site Monday, amidst scenes of devastation.

This story was updated to reflect new developments on Friday, 27 June. 

Israel ordered a near-total halt to food and humanitarian aid deliveries to over two million Gazans facing a territory-wide threat of famine on Thursday after an AFP video surfaced showing dozens of armed men riding atop a convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with flour for northern Gaza.

As hard-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government threatened to resign over alleged aid theft by Hamas, Israeli soldiers testified to local and international media outlets that their commanding military officers issued direct open fire orders on unarmed civilians waiting at food distribution points throughout the past month. 

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier told Israeli outlet Haaretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned last month that all 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face life-threatening food insecurity after a total 11-week blockade of food, medicine and life-saving humanitarian aid by Israel, lifted on 19 May. 

The threat of another blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and Israeli soldier testimonies follow weeks of reports on the mounting death toll of Palestinians trying to reach a limited number of Gaza food distribution sites set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private Israel-US backed aid group with no prior experience in humanitarian operations that became Gaza’s leading distributor of food aid last month.

The group has been mired in controversy over its opaque financial backing, insufficient aid distribution from just four locations in Gaza – down from 400 previously operated by the United Nations and aid groups – and international condemnation for its practices, with the UN and leading humanitarian organisations allege violates international law.

Israel says the private aid distribution model is necessary due to mass Hamas theft of aid shipments. Its government has not yet provided substantial evidence on the alleged scale of the Hamas seizures. 

The reported number of Palestinians shot while trying to reach GHF aid sites surpassed 400 on Wednesday, as the United Nations Human Rights Office pleaded with Israel’s military to “stop shooting at people trying to get food.“

The plea came hours after Israeli troops and drones opened fire on people approaching an aid distribution site operated by GHF in southern Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 44 people, bringing Palestinian deaths in the war above 56,000, according to local health authorities. 

“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food,” Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told reporters at a briefing in Geneva on Wednesday.

The UN has independently verified over 410 deaths from “Israeli military shelling and shooting” of Palestinians travelling to aid sites since GHF operations began last month, Al-Kheetan said. An additional 93 deaths await verification, while confirmed injuries have risen to at least 3,000 as of Wednesday. The UN numbers do not include casualties that occurred since Tuesday.

“Humanitarian assistance must never be used as a bargaining chip in any conflict,” Al-Kheetan said. “The weaponisation of food for civilians, in addition to restricting or preventing their access to life-sustaining services, constitutes a war crime.”

Gaza groups deny Hamas theft as Israel announces aid halt

An ambulance rushed to reach Palestinians reportedly shot by Israeli troops while trying to reach a UN aid distribution site on 23 June.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday his government received information “indicating that Hamas is once again taking control of humanitarian aid entering the northern Gaza Strip and stealing it from civilians.” He announced that he had instructed the military to draft a plan “to prevent Hamas from seizing the aid.”  On Thursday, Israeli authorities told Reuters that aid was still being allowed to enter from the south, but not the north. 

Another prolonged blockade of life-saving aid of food, and medicine would have catastrophic consequences, the UN and international aid agencies said. As of Friday morning, messaging from Israel’s government is unclear on what aid will continue to be allowed into Gaza, or if GHF is excluded from the new restrictions. 

Gaza’s ‘Higher Committee for Tribal Affairs’ – a civilian group not affiliated with Hamas, created during the war – rejected Netanyahu’s “false claims” that the video posted by AFP showed Hamas was stealing the food aid.

“Gaza’s tribal leaders affirmed that all aid is fully secured under their direct supervision and is being distributed exclusively through international agencies,” the committee representing a group of influential Gaza families said in a statement published on Thursday by AFP and the Saudi-based Al Arabiya.

“The securing of aid has been carried out purely through tribal efforts,” it added, suggesting the masked men aboard the trucks were not Hamas fighters at all. The Committee called for a United Nations delegation to determine if aid was being correctly dispatched in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), said it had continued food aid deliveries Thursday, despite the Israeli closure notice, posting on X in mid-afternoon that it had delivered  “again today to the Palestinian people in Gaza, all without incident.” 

In a subsequent X post Thursday evening,  GHF said that it had been allowed by Israel to continue its Gaza operations amid an Israeli pause on UN food deliveries: “Our hope is this will be a temporary pause and all other aid organizations will soon be able to resume distribution.” 

Controversial Aid Provider Takes Control

GHF says it’s delivering food directly to people in need – but only at four Gaza sites. It’s critics say the UN operated 400 distribution points, and cite the high rate of shooting deaths amongst people making the long trek GHF points.

GHF, a private US-Israel backed initiative, emerged following Israel’s total 11-week blockade that ended May 19. It became Gaza’s largest aid provider overnight following the siege on the territory, which pushed 2.1 million residents to the edge of famine.

The initiative, led by the Reverend Johnnie Moore, an evangelical minister and public relations consultant with no prior humanitarian experience but deep ties to the administration of US President Donald Trump, has been universally criticised by the UN and NGO aid institutions.

The Israeli military has claimed violence at the aid sites resulted from firing warning shots at “suspects” approaching troops streaming towards the food sites. It has opened multiple incident investigations but denies responsibility for the deaths.

GHF denies any connection to the violence, while attacks typically have occurred during lengthy marches by thousands of Palestinians streamed toward its aid stations.  GHF also says Hamas, which killed around 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage in its October 7 attacks, has also threatened and attacked its Palestinian aid workers, killing eight people on a bus transporting GHF workers, on 12 June. 

There have also been shootings of people waiting at UN distribution sites.  MSNBC reported said 60 people were shot on June 17 while waiting for the arrival of UN convoys. UK-based Channel 4 on 23 June also cited shootings into a crowd approaching a UN distribution site in north Gaza.

A range of independent reports have attributed most of the shootings to the Israeli military, with Israel’s liberal daily Ha’aretz describing the GHF model as a “fatal failure” last week.

“The attempt to survive is being met with a death sentence,” said Jonathan Whittall, who leads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza and the West Bank at Wednesday’s media briefing. “There shouldn’t be a death toll associated with accessing the essentials for life.”

Forced Displacement Through Hunger

IPC hunger projections for the Gaza Strip, May-September 2025

Israel has meanwhile claimed that more free food aid is reaching Palestinians than before. In an open letter published yesterday, GHF even offered to “partner” with the UN to coordinate more food deliveries. 

“The UN and GHF share the same goal: getting food to those who need it. We can help bring these scenes to an end if the UN and other international organizations partner with us to distribute aid safely and at scale,” said GHF in an X post.

But the UN and other major aid organizations, including Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Oxfam, Amnesty International and Save the Children, have refused to work with GHF – even if it means their aid is denied access to Gaza.

“The position of the UN as a whole has been made clear,” Al-Kheetan said. “We are not part of this operation because it does not comply with international standards on aid distribution.”

Funneling over two million starving people to just a few heavily militarized sites  – including only four administered mainly by the GHF – creates deadly chaos by design, critics have said. It also excludes all but the most able-bodied from reaching the delivery locations. UN agencies previously delivered assistance through approximately 400 points across Gaza, while NGO partners operated food kitchens.

Only the most able-bodied can run the gauntlet to reach Gaza’s limited food distribution points.

GHF claimed Wednesday to have distributed 40 million meals in its first month of operations. That amounts to approximately 0.6 meals per person per day for Gaza’s 2.1 million residents — less than one meal daily in a population facing starvation.

But with all 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face life-threatening food insecurity, according to last month’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, nowhere near enough food, medicine, water and other life-saving supplies are able to enter Gaza to address the scale of the crisis, UN humanitarian groups have noted. 

“Can the GHF prevent famine? The reality is, far too little aid is being distributed from far too few distribution points, all amid concerns that families travelling from northern Gaza to reach sites in the south will not be allowed to return,” said UNICEF chief spokesman James Elder at Wednesday’s briefing.

UN activities operating under severe restrictions

Hunger in Gaza.

While GHF operates freely with Israeli government support, severe restrictions remain on UN activities in Gaza. Of 16 humanitarian coordination requests the UN submitted for permits this weekend, Israeli authorities denied half, the UN Human Rights Office told reporters.

Meanwhile, hundreds of tons of UN-organized food aid are sitting in warehouses in Jordan or in trucks along the Israeli border, awaiting entry to Gaza, UN officials have said. 

“The newly created so-called aid mechanism is an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people,” Philippe Lazzarini, who leads UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency banned by Israel’s government, said in Berlin Tuesday. “It is a death trap costing more lives than it saves.”

Announcements of the GHF sites’ opening hours are made exclusively on Facebook and X, despite frequent internet blackouts across the strip. With internet access both inconsistent and expensive, many civilians make the dangerous trek to distribution sites only to find them closed.

Aid groups and the UN say the system weaponizes hunger to force Palestinians southward, away from northern Gaza, where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a new offensive in May, which critics fear may lead to permanent Israeli control and resettlement of the area. 

Areas currently forbidden to Palestinian civilians by Israel’s military comprise 82% of the Gaza Strip, according to Israel’s Haaretz. Forced displacement is a war crime under international law.

“This turns aid delivery into a weapon of war deployed against civilians,” Martin Griffiths, former UN human rights chief, told The Guardian. “This is a system that exploits hunger to drag desperate people south.”

GHF Attacks UN and Secretary-General

GHF’s recent offers to partner with the UN and other humanitarian groups have been accompanied by searing attacks. In a  letter to Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday, Moore blamed the international body for Gaza’s humanitarian crisis while promoting GHF as the solution.

“The time has come to confront, without euphemism or delay, the structural failure of aid delivery in Gaza,” Moore wrote in the letter published by the Gulf daily, The National, and posted to X. “The United Nations’ continued reliance on what it has termed ‘existing infrastructure’ has, in practice, enabled the obstruction of aid.”

Moore accused the UN of enabling “mass diversion, looting, and the manipulation of humanitarian flows by bad actors” while claiming GHF distributed food despite facing “a vast disinformation campaign.”

Moore’s letter comes as legal scrutiny of his organization intensifies. Fourteen leading international human rights organizations warned Tuesday the company and its security contractors of potential criminal liability for war crimes if they did not immediately cease operations. The groups said the scheme “creates an immediate risk of forced displacement” by “obliging starving, exhausted Palestinians to walk long distances through militarized zones.”

Who’s Behind GHF?

Moore replaced GHF’s original director, Jake Wood, who resigned in late May, after just two weeks in his position, stating it was “not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”

As Moore both attacks UN groups but also offers to cooperate, GHF’s funding remains shrouded in secrecy.

Despite weeks of press inquiries, GHF has refused to disclose its financial backers. Registered as a Geneva-based non-profit, the organization also has a US headquarters in Dover Delaware. But when the BBC visited, they found only a red brick building with no GHF markings or staff.

While Israel officially denies funding GHF, Israeli media reports citing government sources say the government approved a nearly $300 million transfer to the company last month, attempting to hide it under an expenditure marked only as “defense establishment.”

GHF claims it also received $100 million from a foreign government donor but has refused to specify which one.

Meanwhile, the US State Department is weighing a $500 million grant to underwrite the company’s operations for the next 180 days at Israel’s request, Reuters reported. 

“The questions surrounding GHF – its funding sources and connection to the Trump administration, its use of private contractors, its ability to serve and be seen as a neutral entity, its abandonment by its founders, and its basic competence in providing aid – must be answered before the State Department commits any funding to the organization,” Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a 20 June letter published on her website.

Meanwhile on the ground, the hunger and killings continue. This is what the world has decided to normalize, one blogger wrote on Tuesday

 

Image Credits: X/Channel 4 News , X/Gaza Humanitaria Foundation , IPC , X/Channel 4 , WHO .

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