Gaza Foundation – A dark page in the history of humanitarian work comes to an end

From the darkness of closed rooms in November 2024, a criminal organisation emerged under the name Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It was nothing more than a tool in the hands of the Israeli occupation — an instrument designed to militarise humanitarian aid.

Under the cover of darkness on the evening of Thursday, 9 October 2025, as Israeli forces began their withdrawal in accordance with the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, they were ordered to dismantle the distribution centres established by this so-called Gaza Foundation in the south.

Those very centres, which only yesterday served as death traps and sites of humiliation for the desperate, now stand deserted with only hollow ruins that the people of Gaza wander through in shock. They look upon the remnants and wonder how could the world in the twenty-first century allow a criminal organisation to control the food of over two million people. Many remember their loved ones who perished trying to secure a meal for their families; others recall their own wounds or their narrow escape from certain death.

To this day, the Foundation’s operators and backers have not declared its dissolution, though in reality it has ceased to exist. Under the ceasefire agreement, the Foundation has no role whatsoever in the delivery or distribution of humanitarian aid. The accord explicitly states that such responsibilities fall under the mandate of United Nations agencies, first and foremost, UNRWA.

During negotiations, Netanyahu had insisted on keeping the Gaza Foundation and redeploying it alongside the withdrawing army, in order to preserve Israel’s control over humanitarian supplies and entrench the Foundation as a permanent substitute for UN bodies and other relief organisations. Yet, the Palestinian delegation and mediators firmly rejected any continuation of its work.

The aid-distribution system created by the Israeli occupation, backed by the United States, is unprecedented in the history of humanitarian operations. Never before has an organisation, bearing a humanitarian label, operated under direct military supervision, with its “distribution centres” designed as fortified compounds surrounded by soldiers and heavily armed security contractors. Without mercy, they opened fire on starving crowds herded into narrow passageways, leaving the ground strewn with the dead and wounded.

From the earliest days of the genocide, Israel had been laying the groundwork for such a system. It imposed a suffocating siege on Gaza, vowing that no food, medicine, or fuel would be allowed in. It targeted aid workers and UN distribution centres, struck convoys belonging to relief agencies, and in some cases, bombed them outright. Looters were allowed to intercept the few trucks that made it through. Parallel to these atrocities ran a relentless media campaign demonising UN institution, especially UNRWA, until they were completely barred from operating. By the end of May 2025, the Gaza Foundation’s own distribution centres were inaugurated, replacing the UN agencies on the ground.

The occupation defied every international appeal, every UN resolution, and even the precautionary measures issued by the International Court of Justice calling on it to permit the unrestricted entry of aid. Despite the international community possessing mechanisms beyond the Security Council to enforce these rulings, it chose submission, standing idle as famine spread across the Strip.

Rather than pressuring the Israeli occupation to allow aid into Gaza, certain Arab states complicit with the occupation reached cynical arrangements to conduct occasional airdrops, where media spectacles meant only to deflect criticism of their collaboration. Some of these air-dropped crates killed or injured civilians upon impact. Such theatrical gestures did nothing to meet Gaza’s immense needs: each aircraft carried barely half a truck’s load. According to World Food Programme data, even on days with as many as 20 airdrops from multiple countries, the total cargo amounted to roughly 150 tonnes, which is equivalent to six or seven trucks, while Gaza required an average of 600 trucks a day. The so-called “air bridge” thus covered less than one per cent of the actual need.

The Gaza Foundation was nothing but an instrument of Israel’s starvation policy. On one hand, the occupation boasted that the foundation distributed millions of food parcels; on the other hand, it deprived the vast majority of people of food, as they were unable to walk hundreds of kilometres to obtain it. Hunger tore through the young, the sick, the wounded, and the elderly. News screens and newspapers were filled with images of skeletal children and frail elders taking their last breaths. On 22 August 2025, a coalition of UN agencies, including OCHA, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, and the World Food Programme, formally declared that famine had struck Gaza for the first time in the region’s modern history, based on the strict IPC global food-security classification.

The perpetrators behind this criminal organisation believed that American protection would shield them indefinitely. But the circumstances that once made them feel immune are only temporary, and the pursuit of justice is gaining strength. Files have already been submitted to the International Criminal Court detailing the crimes committed by the Foundation’s leaders and collaborators. Requests have been filed with European governments to sanction its officials under the Magnitsky Act. In July 2025, a comprehensive dossier was presented to the Armenian Prosecutor General against Armenian national David Babazian, one of the Foundation’s directors. The office announced the opening of an investigation, coinciding with an international arrest warrant issued against him on corruption charges dating back to 2024.

With full confidence, it can now be said: the Gaza Foundation is a dark page in the history of humanitarian work, and that page has been turned. Whether or not its operators officially announce its dissolution is irrelevant; it no longer exists on the ground, and its leaders face dark days ahead. We can only hope that circumstances will never again allow its return. Despite the many pitfalls in the fragile new agreement, the strong international momentum behind it, reinforced by Donald Trump’s personal guarantees and his attendance with twenty nations at the signing ceremony in Sharm el-Sheikh, are positive indicators. They confirm that the criminal Netanyahu has at last been shackled, unable to manipulate the accord as he has done so many times before.

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