A devastating crisis for Palestinians in Gaza worsens

Some of the worst humanitarian situations the world has faced are the product of natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes; others are the result of poor leadership and bad policy.

What has been unfolding in the Gaza Strip for millions of Palestinians is the direct consequence of the failures of political leaders who are ignoring best practices for the delivery of aid to innocent people caught in the crosshairs of a complicated war. Without a major shift in the current approach, the already dire conditions are only likely to deteriorate further going forward.

Earlier this week, dozens of Palestinians desperate to receive aid and attempting to navigate a new distribution mechanism were shot to death by Israeli soldiers and scores more were injured. This prompted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new entity created by Israel and the United States to circumvent United Nations distribution mechanisms, to announce it was pausing its efforts as it reworked logistical plans to accommodate the high demand from Palestinians. The residents of the war-torn strip have suffered critical shortages due to the war and an Israeli blockade of aid shipments imposed this spring. The GHF has faced strong skepticism and considerable controversy, prompting its first executive director to resign over concerns about its impartiality. A management consulting firm involved in designing the effort also withdrew its services this week.

The weakest link in Trump 2.0’s Middle East policy is the way his administration has responded to the Palestinian issue. His team came into office with a cease-fire and hostage-release plan in place between Israel and Hamas, but then its diplomatic approach undermined that agreement. The administration subsequently backed a plan to distribute aid that appears to suffer from fundamental flaws — and a major course correction is necessary to avert a wider disaster.

Flaws in the current game plan to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza

The establishment of the GHF is a risky attempt to go around the UN channels used to distribute aid in Gaza for years — the stated rationale for the new approach is centered on circumventing Hamas and preventing it from diverting or using aid as leverage. But the practical challenges present in the current environment in Gaza may render the design ineffective and inoperable.

Hardin Lang, vice president of policy at Refugees International, a non-profit group that has worked around the world responding to the needs of displaced people since its founding in 1979, wrote to me about the inherent mistakes the GHF is making with its current aid delivery scheme. Lang highlighted at least four key flaws in the foundation’s design and operations:

1. The militarization of aid delivery. The GHF centralizes aid distribution in four secure hubs operated by private American military contractors and surrounded by Israeli military forces. Surveillance technologies, including biometric screening, are reportedly used to vet recipients. This approach embeds humanitarian assistance in a militarized framework, increasing the risk of friction between desperate civilians and security forces. The downside risks of this approach are now on full display in the tragedies unfolding over the last few days at GHF distribution sites. 

2. Displacement and access concerns. The GHF hubs would replace over 400 existing UN and non-governmental organization (NGO) distribution points, and they would be concentrated mainly in the far south, with none approved in the north. Vulnerable populations — children, the elderly, and the injured — have to travel long distances under dangerous conditions to receive assistance. This not only raises concerns about their protection but may be intended to coerce hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain north of Gaza City into relocating southward to access aid, potentially constituting crimes of forced displacement under international law.

3. Lack of capacity and operational viability. The GHF’s untested nature makes it highly unlikely that it could scale operations in time to prevent famine. Humanitarian famine operations are multi-sector responses comprising population-level health, water, nutrition, and protection services in addition to food distribution. An effective famine response cannot operate out of a handful of secure fixed hubs. According to the latest snapshot from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), Gaza stands on the brink of full-scale famine, with the UN warning that its entire population is at risk.

4. Lack of regional and international support. Key regional actors, including the United Arab Emirates, have declined to participate, and aid agencies have rejected the proposal outright. If famine or mass starvation takes hold in Gaza — as current projections indicate — the reputational damage to both Israel and the United States will be profound. European donors have also baulked at calls to support the GHF.

Lang, who has worked for decades in complicated security and political situations around the world, offered several ideas about a better pathway forward. The main element of an effective response is the large-scale delivery of food, water, medical, and nutrition aid through the existing aid distribution channels established by NGOs and the UN — this would lower food prices and deflate the black market while alleviating humanitarian needs. However, the issue in Gaza is not supply — there is plenty of food, water, medical, and nutrition aid sitting in warehouses just over the border — but rather access.

The human impact: A view from inside the Gaza Strip

In an effort to understand how Palestinians in Gaza see what is unfolding with this new aid distribution effort, I reached out to my friend and former colleague Bassam Nasser, whom I worked with in the 1990s, when I lived in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and profiled in 2023, at the start of this awful war.

Nasser described Gazans’ current predicament as living “between fear, humiliation, and starvation.” It is often easy to avert our eyes from the human impact of conflicts like this and spend time and energy engaging in blame games and politicized debates, but it is important to keep the human element front and center.

Nasser wrote to me today about how ordinary Palestinians in Gaza are living. According to him:

Forced from their homes, families now live in makeshift shelters of cloth, plastic, or tin tents provided by humanitarian groups, if they’re lucky. They watch as soldiers celebrate the destruction of their neighborhoods, their livelihoods erased without remorse.

 

The indignities are relentless: sharing latrines with strangers, waiting for hours just to relieve oneself, avoiding eye contact to spare any further shame. The worst form of humiliation? Accepting these conditions as normal while fearing what degradation comes next.

 

Survival now depends on tasteless meals from community kitchens, where people wait for hours under scorching sun or pouring rain — children, women, elderly, and the disabled all shoved together in a desperate scramble. No one gets priority; kindness means going hungry. Water is another battle. The sound of tanker trucks triggers a frantic rush, where only the aggressive get their share. Gentleness means thirst.

 

This is no accident. Humiliation is a deliberate tactic — to break dignity, to make displacement seem inevitable. Starvation is another tool, stripping away the last remnants of humanity.

 

In recent days, starving families have walked miles to reach food aid, only to be shot at by soldiers. Some have heard mocking shouts through megaphones: “Hungry Gazans, come get your food like dogs!” Others were forced to strip while soldiers jeered, “Where’s the starvation? Look how fat they are!”

 

Of all the horrors, nothing cuts deeper than humiliation. Some wounds — inflicted in front of your children — will never heal. No therapy can erase such trauma. This is not just war. This is the systematic dehumanization of an entire people.

Analysts from afar can choose to dispute some of the things this one person has to say about his situation in Gaza, but it would be a mistake to close our eyes and ears to the very real perceptions and views shaped by the dire conditions he and his community are facing in their daily lives — conditions that will only get worse as the summer heat rises.

A look ahead to the coming weeks

A growing number of Israeli voices are raising serious concerns about the current course in Gaza. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert argues that Israel is committing “war crimes” as he rejects charges of genocide against his country. A leading political opposition figure in Israel, Yair Golan, recently saw an increase in his public support after criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for killing babies in Gaza as a “hobby.” As always, debates inside of Israel are complicated by sharp internal divisions; but the fact that more leading voices are raising the alarm is an important shift.

Looking ahead to the coming weeks, the elevated risk of famine in Gaza comes as several countries, led by France and Saudi Arabia, plan to hold a conference at the United Nations in mid-June to bolster support for a two-state solution. But unless there is an immediate course correction on aid delivery, the UN diplomatic conference, however well intentioned, will be vastly overshadowed by images of food riots and starving children in Gaza.

 

Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at MEI.

Photo by Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images