TEHRAN – The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial U.S. and Israeli-backed aid scheme that sidelined the UN and used armed American contractors, was permanently shut down on November 24.

Washington and Tel Aviv immediately celebrated the closure as a triumph. GHF’s final statement declared it had succeeded in its mission and delivered a record 187 million meals without a single box falling into Hamas hands. American officials described the project as conclusive proof that the UN system was irredeemably corrupt and that only a militarized model could prevent aid from being “stolen by terrorists.”

But facts on the ground tell a different story. From its launch in late May until its abrupt end, GHF operated a system that deliberately lured starving Palestinian civilians into open killing zones. Every one of its four distribution points was deliberately placed inside active Israeli military corridors: three in the far south near Rafah, one near Nuseirat in the center of the Strip. The sites were ringed by Israeli forces and guarded by armed American contractors.

Announcements of food distributions were broadcast by loudspeaker and sent by text message, drawing thousands of desperate people across miles of rubble and destroyed roads. Once the crowds had gathered in the open, gunfire routinely erupted, often without warning. Independent monitors, including the UN Human Rights Office, Airwars, Forensic Architecture, and Gaza’s Health Ministry, documented about 1,000 Palestinians killed and several thousand wounded at or near those sites. Human Rights Watch, after analyzing satellite imagery, videos, and survivor testimony, concluded that multiple incidents appear to amount to war crimes.

The United Nations refused to have anything to do with GHF from the very beginning. Secretary-General António Guterres called the model “an abomination.” Humanitarian organizations, among them Oxfam, Save the Children, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Amnesty International, demanded its immediate closure, warning that forcing famished civilians into militarized corridors was a recipe for massacre. 

Warnings were ignored

The food boxes themselves weighed up to 20 kilograms, a deliberate design choice that excluded the elderly, the injured, and small children. Those who could reach the sites often paid extortionate transport fees or risked sniper fire on the journey.

For the United States, GHF was never simply about feeding people. Trump administration officials repeatedly cited it as evidence that “Hamas steals aid,” using the narrative to justify continued military support to Israel while preserving a thin veneer of humanitarian concern.

On the same day the foundation was officially shut down for good – the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center announced it would “build on the GHF model” for the future. That single statement proved the whole project had never been about feeding Gaza: it had been a six-month pilot to fuse humanitarian aid with military occupation.

The GHF was never a neutral charity. It was a calculated, lethal experiment that weaponized hunger, turned the basic human need for bread into bait, and delivered death by bullet.