* Source: @osintdefender

GHF has militarized aid, using humanitarian assistance for strategic control, not relief, at the service of Israel’s genocide. 

In Gaza, this included: 

• Aid sites in militarized zones requiring biometric screening overseen by Israel. 
• Distribution by private mercenary firms with military backgrounds.
• Designating GHF’s access roads as combat zones.
• Starvation used as a weapon by delaying or limiting access to aid.
• Replacing neutral agencies like the UN with politically aligned, military-linked entities. 

During the time of operations of the genocidal GHF, Israel has killed more than 3000 Palestinians in Gaza seeking aid and wounded more than 20,000. Aid seekers were shot by Israeli forces or private mercenaries. Some aid seekers were forcibly disappeared. These attacks on life represent the escalation of a deadly tactic that has been a key part of Israel’s Zionist strategy since its foundation – a tactic that has helped precipitate a famine, enable the routine slaughter of people trying to collect food and other essential supplies, and deny Palestinians the basic necessities required to sustain life in Gaza. 

The aid itself has been inadequate – mostly dried goods requiring cooking, even as water and gas infrastructure is bombed. Gang looting of aid has been widespread and openly facilitated by Israel, depriving Palestinians in Gaza of essential food. 

Areas Israel wants depopulated received little or no aid, while rations were concentrated in zones designated for Palestinian relocation. GHF operated through four large distribution “mega-sites” concentrated in southern Gaza, replacing the previous system of 400 decentralized aid points across the Strip. Distribution was limited to southern Gaza, forcing civilians into dangerous journeys. Many had to walk around 3 hours to reach GHF’s militarized aid sites, effectively pushing them towards Rafah.

Israel used GHF to forcibly displace Palestinians and facilitate repression, and surveillance, masking military operations as aid. UN officials have called GHF a “fig leaf for genocide”. Alex de Waal, who researches the use of mass starvation as a weapon of war at the World Peace Foundation, concluded that “GHF method can be seen as creating a ‘digital concentration camp’ that combines surveillance humanitarianism for those deemed eligible with individually targeted starvation for those not.” 

Médecins Sans Frontières called GHF’s distribution centres sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”, and Amnesty International described the organisation as “another tool in Israel’s campaign of genocide”. Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA called it “an abomination” and “a death trap costing more lives than it saves.” UN Special Rapporteur for the OPT Francesca Albanese has called GHF distribution sites “slaughter houses”, while UN experts have denounced “the entanglement of Israeli intelligence, US contractors and ambiguous non-governmental entities”. More than 200 NGOs have called for GHF to be dismantled and urged donors not to fund it. UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA denounced GHF’s food distribution plans as a dangerous and “deliberate attempt to weaponise aid” in order to serve Israel’s “military strategy” in Gaza. 

According to an investigation by Forensic Architecture (FA), since March 18, the Israeli military has replaced the civilian-led humanitarian aid system in Gaza with a militarised model designed to serve its strategic goals. This shift used aid as a tool to advance military and political objectives, rather than to meet the basic needs of the Palestinian population. Starvation has been inflicted not only through physical deprivation but also by targeting the collective identity and cohesion of Palestinian society—severing ties to land, family, and community. In violation of international humanitarian norms, aid is being weaponised to force displacement, control movement, and destabilize civil society. Access to aid became increasingly dangerous, with civilians being killed or injured while seeking food. 

The military-controlled aid system, relying on airdrops and ration stations, fails to provide adequate nutrition and lacks the infrastructure needed to sustain life. This approach deepens psychological trauma, aims to erode resilience, and continues to dismantle the social structures that once supported community life in Gaza. Rather than acting as a neutral humanitarian mechanism, the aid distribution has become a method of population control, reinforcing dependency and stripping Palestinians of autonomy and dignity. The ongoing use of this model exacerbates the humanitarian crisis, contributing to what has been described as a genocidal campaign by depriving people of the basic conditions necessary to survive.

Israel has transformed the effects of almost two decades of illegal blockade of Gaza and the vulnerability it created over years into a weapon of slow annihilation, which accelerated with the genocide. Food and water, which have long been used as weapons of war, have become also tools of genocide. In the words of the chair of the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, this is Israel’s engineered policy of starvation: “Tracing Israel’s actions and statements – the long blockade, closure of crossings, blocking of convoys, targeting of food warehouses, destruction of farmland, fishing bans, undermining UNRWA, looting of aid, attacks on civilians seeking food, strikes on police and security escorts, repeated unlawful evacuation orders and even the creation of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – shows a clear pattern.” 

GHF involvement with gang looters and how that is shaping Gaza’s post genocide politics

The US and Israel have already been shaping the post-genocide Gaza’s political governance, understanding the central role of aid delivery in Gaza.

Controlling aid delivery to Gaza through the recently set up, US-Israeli run Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat is said to be tracked by drone surveillance to not allow any looting of aid deliveries. However, looting aid has been a key driving factor in US-Israel’s weaponization of starvation to feed into a “divide and conquer” colonial strategy between Palestinians in Gaza. A Sky News investigation has documented how the looting gangs led by Yasser Abu Shabab, the so-called ‘Popular Forces’, have received food from GHF, despite its supposed “impartiality” and terminated work in the Strip. Their base’s location sits along the route by which aid trucks must travel when entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, a route that aid officials have named “Looters’ Alley”. An internal UN report, dated November 2024, identified the “Popular Forces” as “the most influential stakeholders behind the systematic and massive looting of convoys”.

The cooperation between Israel and the “Popular Forces”, mainly goes through Israel’s security service, the Shin Bet, and happens mainly with the Israeli Unit 585, or the Desert Reconnaissance Battalion, who are stationed at the Kerem Shalom border crossing; the same crossing through which Yasser Abu Shabab’s supplies are smuggled. This cooperation goes far beyond looting aid: the Popular Forces have coordinated with the Israeli Air Forces.  

Israel and the US are not the only countries involved in this mechanism. Also the Palestinian Authority, and the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE are playing their part. Just like the many Israeli-registered license plated cars smuggled to Gaza for these gangs, the Senior Commander of the “Popular Forces” has been seen driving a car witha UAE-registered license plate. The “Popular Forces” use the same logo as the UAE-backed Yemeni militia. Echoing UAE-Israel normalization ties, Abu Shabab wants to reform the school curriculum (medical facilities, a school, and even a mosque have been set up in recent months) and hold a referendum on normalising ties with Israel.

Even though Yasser Abu Shabab himself was killed on December 4, 2025, it is likely Israel will continue to arm and support his or other looting gangs as yet another tool in its genocide.