Reported Israeli aid distribution plan in Gaza is inhumane, aims to engineer starvation
Palestinians receive humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA in Jabalia, Gaza Strip, on 9 April 2025
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor writes on 4 May 2025:
Israel’s reported plan to distribute humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip is nothing more than a new manoeuvre aimed at prolonging the comprehensive and illegal blockade imposed on the territory. This move reintroduces starvation, only under a humanitarian façade this time, legitimising its continued use as a weapon within the context of an ongoing genocide that has lasted more than 19 months.
The plan centres on full control of the aid system—from defining the type and quantity of aid, to regulating its entry, storage, distribution, and who is allowed to receive it. This reflects a clear Israeli intent to manage starvation rather than end it, and to further entrench control over the most basic necessities of life for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
According to Israeli reports, Israel, in coordination with the United States, is working to establish a new mechanism for delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip through an “international fund” supported by donor countries and institutions. Under this mechanism, the Israeli army will construct aid distribution complexes in certain parts of the Strip. Palestinian families will be permitted to access these complexes once a week to receive a single aid package per family, intended to last seven days. A private American company will manage logistics and provide security within and around the complexes, while the Israeli army will secure the surrounding areas.
The plan centres on full control of the aid system—from defining the type and quantity of aid, to regulating its entry, storage, distribution, and who is allowed to receive it
While Israel claims the new mechanism is meant to prevent aid from reaching Hamas or being used to support its activities, it in fact reinforces a system of total control over the enclave’s civilian population, turning food, medicine, and water into tools of collective extortion managed by a military-security, rather than a humanitarian-legal, framework.
The proposed mechanism is an extension of Israel’s ongoing policy of suffocation in the Gaza Strip and serves as a diversion from the urgent need for immediate, unconditional humanitarian access. It effectively grants Israel more time, both to starve the Strip’s population and to normalise the systematic destruction and devastation occurring during the genocide that it continues to commit.
Reported details of the new mechanism reveal that it would rely on establishing aid distribution facilities in specific locations—far from densely populated areas and close to Israeli military positions—posing a grave risk to civilians, given that aid would be used as a tool for forced population transfer under a humanitarian guise. Starving families, subjected to a systematic Israeli starvation policy since October 2023, will likely be compelled to relocate near these sites to survive, enabling Israel to depopulate large residential areas and impose a new demographic reality that prevents people’s return.
Israel’s track record in similar contexts provides strong grounds to believe that the proposed mechanism will not be neutral or humanitarian, but rather a new tool in its ongoing forced displacement strategy. During Israel’s invasion and destruction of the North Gaza Governorate in October 2024, Euro-Med Monitor documented the Israeli army’s use of complex, coordinated methods to push residents southward in order to access food and aid.
This campaign combined heavy bombardment and a total siege with the dropping of airborne leaflet propaganda and phone calls urging residents to move to the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi, all while under the threat of being denied aid if they remained in areas designated as combat zones.
The proposed mechanism also constitutes a dual violation of international law. First, it breaches Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires it to meet the basic needs of the occupied population and facilitate humanitarian aid without delay, discrimination, or political conditions. Second, the proposal contravenes principles of international humanitarian and human rights law, which prohibit the use of aid as a tool of political pressure or control. These laws mandate that aid be delivered based solely on need, with neutrality, on a non-discriminatory basis, and in a timely, adequate manner—all principles that are entirely absent from the proposed Israeli mechanism.
Additionally, the proposed mechanism effectively sets the stage for permanent Israeli control over parts of the Gaza Strip, enabling a disguised form of creeping annexation. By placing “humanitarian complexes” in open areas near military sites, these places are transformed into Israeli security belts inaccessible to Palestinian civilians in the area, leading to their geographic and demographic separation from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
These areas may later be reclassified as closed military zones or “logistical corridors” linked to military and civilian infrastructure, financed by international bodies under a humanitarian pretext. This would grant the Israeli presence in the Strip de facto legitimacy, making it virtually irreversible. In this way, temporary control tied to aid distribution and meeting “humanitarian needs” could become a gateway for reshaping the enclave’s geographic reality.
Israel’s direct or indirect management of this mechanism could also serve undisclosed purposes, including the collection of updated data on the civilian population—their locations, movements, and displacement patterns—which could then be used to track, monitor, target, and blackmail them. Israel has been illegally collecting data on Palestinian civilians for decades.
Lastly, limiting each family to one aid package per week falls far short of meeting the minimum standards for addressing famine or restoring food security. Instead, it offers a Band-Aid or superficial cover for the ongoing crisis.
Rather than ensuring a stable and sufficient flow of aid, as mandated by international law, aid is weaponised as a form of blackmail, with access to food governed by Israeli “security” restrictions. This turns the fulfilment of basic survival needs into a privilege, conditional on the whims of the Israeli army, and eliminates any capacity for the Palestinian population or institutions to adapt by storing and preserving food.
Field evidence, especially since Israel resumed its genocide on 18 March 2025, shows that the proposed humanitarian aid mechanism is not intended to alleviate the crisis, but to tighten control over the population and re-engineer the humanitarian landscape under so-called military-security oversight.
Over the past two days, Israel has targeted charitable institutions and food facilities, killing at least eight relief workers in the central and northern Gaza Strip. It has also carried out systematic attacks on security personnel responsible for protecting food storage facilities, enabling their looting and the depletion of already scarce supplies.
Under the pretext of “political neutrality”, the proposed mechanism also seeks to sideline UNRWA and Palestinian as well as international relief organisations. This deliberate exclusion targets the most experienced and field-tested actors, who have consistently provided effective and equitable aid. If the mechanism is implemented, this exclusion will deprive the Gaza Strip’s population of trusted relief channels capable of delivering consistent and transparent aid, replacing such channels with a new system controlled by political and security interests while simultaneously dismantling the longstanding structures that have served as a lifeline. At a time when urgency and efficiency are critical, the construction of an elaborate mechanism designed to serve political and criminal agendas at the expense of civilian lives must be halted by the international community.
The United States’ involvement in planning and promoting the proposed mechanism is not incidental, but is a direct extension of its political and military support for Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. The US administration has provided crucial diplomatic cover, repeatedly using its Security Council veto to block international efforts to hold Israel accountable. Simultaneously, it has supplied a steady flow of weapons and ammunition, directly used to kill 10s of thousands of Palestinians—a conservative estimate—and to bomb shelters, homes, schools, and hospitals.
Now, through its backing of a dystopian aid mechanism, the US is complicit in a policy of systematic mass starvation—presented as humanitarian relief but designed to deepen control of the Gaza Strip and diminish chances of Palestinian survival there. This makes the United States an active accessory in what is considered to be one of the gravest international crimes.
Israel’s attempt to feign neutrality by outsourcing aid distribution to a private American company is a ploy to evade its responsibilities as an occupying power while maintaining control over all residents of the Gaza Strip. Despite the presence of an intermediary, Israel retains effective authority over both the territory and the aid system, and remains fully responsible for ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access under international law.
The international community must refrain from supporting, funding, or engaging with the proposed mechanism and should pressure Israel to cancel it immediately. Otherwise, it is complicit in Israel’s framing of its illegal blockade as necessary under the pretext of “security concerns” and in enabling the ongoing crime of mass starvation of civilians in the Gaza Strip through the guise of “humanitarian efforts”.
The international community must take all necessary legal, political, and humanitarian measures to lift the illegal blockade on the Strip and ensure the immediate, unrestricted flow of aid through all land, sea, and air crossings. Aid distribution must be coordinated in a manner that is neutral, effective, and responsive to the population’s actual needs, ending Israel’s criminal control over relief supplies. The ongoing blockade constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law and serves as a tool of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Relief workers and food distribution facilities must be protected, and deliberate attacks on food banks, warehouses, and humanitarian personnel must end. These assaults are intended to sabotage famine relief efforts and are in direct violation of international humanitarian law, which mandates the protection of civilian infrastructure and grants special protection to humanitarian aid operations.
All states, individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; and holding Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinians. The International Criminal Court must reissue arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.
The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel bans; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.
All states must hold accountable those countries complicit in Israel’s crimes, most notably the United States and others that provide support or assistance enabling the aforementioned acts. This collaboration includes aid and contractual cooperation in the military, intelligence, political, legal, financial, media, and economic sectors that contribute to the continuation of Israeli crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
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