Thousands of hungry Palestinians overran an aid compound in southern Gaza, desperate for food after weeks of Israeli blockade.
They were coming to get parcels from a newly formed agency with links to both the American and Israeli governments.
The food is some of the first that Gazans have had access to in weeks because Israel has been stopping almost all aid from entering Gaza since March 2, only allowing small amounts into the strip in the past week.
While the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) expand their military offensive in Gaza, the Israeli government has moved to stop the United Nations (UN) and other agencies from distributing food in Gaza and replaced them with a mysterious new contractor.
The fate of many there now relies on a plan that echoes previous Israeli proposals to sidestep the longstanding international aid delivery system.
Instead of recognised international agencies, a newly registered American private security contractor is now responsible for delivering food to 2.1 million Gazans.
The company, Safe Reach Solutions, is unknown in the humanitarian field.
It has been backed by a new charity with undeclared funding sources, and has been recruiting combat veterans.
The company is reportedly headed by a former senior CIA officer, and was only registered in November last year.
Safe Reach Solutions's relief operation is funded by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new charity which initially incorporated in both the United States and Switzerland before dissolving some of its legal entities in the face of investigations.
How will aid be delivered?
The GHF's stated plan is to set up four aid distribution hubs in southern and central Gaza.
The US government said the aid distribution hubs would be secured by the Israeli military outside and armed private security contractors within.
But the GHF said there would be no Israeli soldiers near the hubs.
"The IDF will not be stationed at or near [distribution] locations," it said.
About 300,000 pre-approved Palestinians will be able to go to each of the four compounds, where they will be given "food rations, potable water, hygiene kits, blankets, and other necessary humanitarian supplies", the GHF said in a statement.
It aims to expand that to reach more than 2 million people in total.
"GHF's mission is to alleviate the suffering of Gaza's civilian population by delivering life-saving aid safely, securely, and in strict adherence to humanitarian principles — ensuring assistance reaches those most in need, without diversion or delay," the GHF said.
The agency said it began delivering aid on Monday and would continue delivering aid daily despite the problem at its distribution point on Tuesday.
Footage showed thousands of people mobbing the distribution site, but GHF played down the severity of the incident.
"At one moment in the late afternoon, the volume of people at the SDS was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties," GHF said.
"Normal operations have resumed."
The agency said it had delivered about 8,000 boxes of aid so far.
"Each box feeds 5.5 people for 3.5 days, totalling 462,000 meals," GHF said.
Some Palestinians who received aid said they were grateful for the packages.
"It's a big box. It is worth 1,000 shekels [about $400]. There is flour, sugar, cookies, there is everything," Salim Shehade, from north Gaza's Jabalia, said.
"I can feed my children for a week with that," another recipient, Mohammad Afana, said.
According to the Israeli military, 170 trucks belonging to the UN and other aid groups crossed into Gaza on Monday after security inspections.
Aid agencies have said 500 to 700 truckloads of aid are needed every day to supply essentials.
The Israeli military department that deals with civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian Territories, COGAT, said it had cleared 400 trucks belonging to the UN and other agencies to enter Gaza.
"The contents, containing primarily food, have accumulated in the past several days and are waiting for collection and distribution by UN teams, which have yet to arrive, collect and distribute aid to the Gazan civilians in the past week," the agency's head, Major-General Ghassan Alian, said in a statement."
The United Nations and other groups have said Israel's escalation of its military campaign, refusal to coordinate access and the resulting chaos inside Gaza have made it almost impossible to safely deliver aid.
The UN and established humanitarian groups have also expressed outrage about GHF's plan, which echoes multiple Israeli proposals for humanitarian "bubbles" inside Gaza aimed at isolating the militant group Hamas.
Israel accuses the militant group of stealing aid and says its blockade on the entry of food into the strip is partly aimed at preventing Hamas from diverting supplies.
But the World Food Programme's Cindy McCain said: "People are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it."
"This doesn't have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organised crime or anything."
An early plan for bubbles trialled in January 2024 reportedly failed when Hamas killed the Palestinians who had been hired to guard the aid.
A similar idea was floated again in July 2024 and then again in late 2024, when Israel's government was being urged to consider something called "The Generals' Plan".
Under the proposal from former IDF Major-General Giora Eiland, Israeli forces would clear northern Gaza and only deliver aid to the south.
"After all the civilians leave and only the combatants stay, then we don't have to fight," he told the ABC in November.
"Those combatants who stay in this area will have to decide either to surrender or to die of starvation."
GHF director resigns and aid groups push for probe
Already, the group has run into serious administrative problems.
The executive director of the GHF, Jake Wood, resigned on May 25, the same day Swiss authorities announced they might investigate a human rights group's complaint about the organisation.
Mr Wood said he resigned because of concerns about the aid mechanism.
"It is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon," he said in a statement.
The rights group TRIAL International had asked Swiss government agencies to investigate whether the GHF complied with Swiss and international law.
After that, the GHF announced it was closing the Swiss entity and would be operating solely with a new, US-registered foundation.
The director of that foundation is American lawyer Loik Henderson, who the GHF said was a corporate law specialist.
The GHF board said it was disappointed by Mr Wood's "sudden" resignation, but promised to begin deliveries the next day.
"Unfortunately, from the moment GHF was announced, those who benefit from the status quo have been more focused on tearing this apart than on getting aid in, afraid that new, creative solutions to intractable problems might actually succeed," the board said in a statement.
One experienced humanitarian worker in the region told the ABC that GHF's process was a "shit show", reminiscent of last year's $350 million US military pier that was supposed to help to bring aid to Gaza but broke up in rough seas after operating for only 20 days.
"It's pier 2.0," they said.
"And also a repeat of the air drops that killed people."
Aid groups have condemned the plan from the outset, saying it breaches the humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality.
"It makes aid conditional on political and military aims. It makes starvation a bargaining chip. It is a cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement," UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council on May 13.
The plan threatens the established practices for delivering aid in conflicts worldwide, Oxfam's policy lead for the occupied Palestinian Territories, Bushra Khalidi, told the ABC.
"If this becomes the new normal, the whole world is in trouble," she said.
"We are basically turning aid into a tool of control.
"If this becomes the only model — fragmented, militarised, opaque — it sets a terrifying precedent not just for Gaza, but for any future crises."
GHF funding remains unclear
The US government is nevertheless backing the proposal, saying it comes directly from President Donald Trump, and denying it is an Israeli plan linked to Israeli military goals in Gaza.
"This is not an IDF or an Israeli operation. That would cause some potential partners to say we don't want to be involved," US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told a press conference in Jerusalem on May 9.
"The Israelis' role — and this is a significant one — is helping provide security. But they're not operating the distribution, they're not operating the bringing of the food in or the distribution of the food when it gets into Gaza."
But investigations by The New York Times and Israeli newspaper Haaretz have both revealed extensive Israeli involvement in the plan.
"The New York Times found that the broad contours of the plan were first discussed in late 2023, at private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government," the paper said.
Neither the US nor Israeli governments have said who is funding the GHF.
"There are some people who have already committed to helping fund," Mr Huckabee said.
"They don't want to be disclosed as of yet. When they do, we'll announce them or they'll announce themselves."
Israeli Opposition leader Yair Lapid has even suggested the Israeli government could be funding the group, something swiftly denied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.
Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether the Israeli military will allow deliveries to the various humanitarian agencies operating in Gaza.
The groups said they have thousands of trucks waiting outside Gaza.
Israel has only allowed a few hundred to enter the strip in recent days, after 11 weeks of complete blockade that sent Gazans to the brink of starvation, according to the UN and WHO.
"We do not need to wait for a declaration of famine in Gaza to know that people are already starving, sick and dying, while food and medicines are minutes away across the border," WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier in May.
[YouTube The World]
