The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: A humanitarian name for an inhumane mission

Nine months after its suspicious establishment, the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced on Monday the end of its operations in the Gaza Strip, closing a dark, bloody chapter of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians. Rather than alleviating suffering, the GHF became a central actor in deepening Gaza’s starvation, humiliation, and mass casualties. Its short-lived mission will be remembered not for humanitarian relief, but for entrenching one of the most brutal starvation-engineering operations in modern history.

Completely detached from the human tragedy it helped manufacture, GHF Executive Director John Acree claimed the group had been “successful in its mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans.” Yet his celebratory tone cannot erase the well-documented record of violence, chaos, and death at GHF distribution sites. Footage that circulated widely on social media forced the world to see the truth: GHF’s aid system was militarised, dehumanising, and deadly. Its final statement did not even acknowledge a single one of the Palestinian casualties caused by its operations—an omission that reflects the group’s utter disregard for the people it claimed to serve.

From its operations’ launch in May 2025, Palestinians viewed the GHF with deep suspicion, seeing it as an Israeli-designed mechanism to replace the UN’s established humanitarian system and to engineer famine under the guise of aid. The UN itself repeatedly warned that the GHF was a political project designed to bypass international humanitarian standards and grant Israel direct control over aid distribution.

GHF aid sites: From relief centers to death traps

Instead of offering relief, the GHF turned food distribution into a coercive and deadly operation. Its sites—surrounded by private US contractors and Israeli military forces—quickly became known to Gazans as “death traps.” Yet famine left civilians with no choice: hunger forced them toward GHF locations despite the risks, amid a catastrophic food crisis that the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) ranked at its highest level—Phase 5 famine.

UN officials, legal experts, and human rights organisations publicly accused the GHF of violating the foundational principles of humanitarian work—neutrality, independence, and impartiality. Far from mitigating famine, the foundation’s presence intensified suffering, creating violent, unpredictable spaces where civilians desperate for food faced lethal danger.

Between late May and October 2025, at least 2,615 Palestinians were killed—including 225 children—as a direct result of the GHF mechanism. More than 19,000 others were injured.

According to Gaza’s local authorities:

-1,506 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while waiting or queuing near GHF sites.

-1,109 Palestinians were killed inside the sites themselves, many by direct Israeli gunfire.

-On 20 July alone, Israeli forces killed 93 Palestinian aid seekers at various GHF sites, and injured dozens others.

Despite this horrifying toll, GHF officials never commented on the shootings. One former US contractor revealed that the foundation’s operations were conducted under direct Israeli military orders, confirming long-held Palestinian suspicions. Human rights groups and UN experts labeled these killings systematic, calling many incidents war crimes and accusing the GHF of enabling Israel’s weaponization of starvation.

Aid sites used for arrests and enforced disappearances

Beyond the killings, GHF distribution points were routinely used as sites of mass arrests and enforced disappearances. Palestinian rights groups documented dozens of cases—some involving children—of individuals who vanished after approaching GHF locations. Many of these cases were formally submitted to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

In several instances, the Israeli military admitted detaining individuals but refused to reveal their whereabouts or allow any contact with their families—meeting the legal definition of enforced disappearance. With access to Gaza restricted and families afraid to speak publicly, the true number of disappearances remains unknown. What is clear, however, is that GHF sites operated not only as starvation hubs but also as tools of detention and abduction.

A legacy of harm, not humanity

John Acree’s announcement of the GHF’s withdrawal from Gaza marks the end of its physical presence, but not the end of its impact. Thousands of Palestinian families remain shattered—breadwinners who left home in search of food never returned. The foundation’s legacy will be remembered as a stain on humanitarian work and a key instrument in Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign.

For Palestinians, the GHF represents an open wound, a daily reminder of the US administration’s complicity and the catastrophic failure of the global community to restrain a genocidal regime or defend the most basic principles of human dignity. No amount of public relations rhetoric or political spin can obscure the truth: the GHF was not a humanitarian foundation. It was a mechanism of control, a tool of humiliation, and a deadly extension of Israel’s war machine.

One day, Palestinians hope, those responsible for the crimes committed under the GHF – including its directors, its funders, its contractors, and the occupying power that controlled it – will stand before international courts. History will not remember the GHF as a relief organisation; it will be remembered as a front for genocide, a collaborator in starvation, and a chilling example of how humanitarian language can be weaponised to mask inhumanity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.