New Gaza aid plan, bypassing UN and billed as neutral, originated in Israel

Throughout the war in the Gaza Strip, United Nations agencies and experienced aid groups have overseen the distribution of food aid in the territory. Now Israel is set to transfer that responsibility to a handful of newly formed private organizations with obscure histories and unknown financial backers.

Supporters of the project describe it as an independent and neutral initiative run mainly by U.S. contractors. The main group providing security is run by Philip F. Reilly, a former senior CIA officer, and a fundraising group is headed by Jake Wood, a former U.S. Marine, who said in an interview that the system would be phased in soon.

Announcing the arrangement in early May, Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said it was “wholly inaccurate” to call it “an Israeli plan.”

But the project is an Israeli brainchild, first proposed by Israeli officials in the earliest weeks of the war, according to Israeli officials, people involved in the initiative and others familiar with its conception, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak more freely of the initiative.

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 businesspeople with close ties to the Israeli government.

The group’s leading figures gradually settled on the idea of hiring private contractors to distribute food in Gaza, circumventing the United Nations. Throughout 2024, they then fostered support among Israel’s political leaders and some military commanders, and began to develop it with foreign contractors, principally Reilly.

The plan was designed to undermine Hamas’ control of Gaza; prevent food from falling into militants’ hands or the black market; and bypass the United Nations, which Israeli officials do not trust and have accused of anti-Israeli bias. Israeli officials argued, too, that their plan would move distribution out of chaotic and lawless areas into zones under Israeli military control.

U.N. officials pushed back, contending that the plan would restrict food aid to limited parts of Gaza and warning that it could endanger civilians by forcing them to walk for miles, across Israeli military lines, to reach food. The U.N. also warns that the system could facilitate an Israeli plan to displace civilians out of northern Gaza, since the initial distribution sites would only be in the south.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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