Over $140 million a month: the secret source funding Gaza humanitarian aid

Palestinians seeking aid at a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Rafah, southern Gaza on 27 May 2025

Hagai Amit writes in Haaretz on 29 May 2025:

While disturbing images of Gazans storming and emptying food distribution centers in the Strip aired across the media on Tuesday, Israel’s major marketing firms were grappling with a mystery: who is funding the humanitarian aid operation in Gaza?

The initiative is reportedly backed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and managed by the U.S.-based private company Safe Reach Solutions (SRS).

“We want to work with SRS, but we haven’t been able to reach them,” said the CEO of a major Israeli company that supplies goods to various aid organizations operating in Gaza alongside SRS and GHF.

“We managed to get in touch with GHF,” and “their representatives sat down with me and explained that they intended to entrust us with the entire operation of managing food deliveries into Gaza, but they simply don’t have the funds to support it,” he added.  “If they’ve already begun operations, someone must have trusted their commitment to pay. But that’s not how you do business, especially not on this scale,” said the CEO.

The scale of the operation is indeed enormous. GHF has quoted a cost of $1.30 USD per meal, and plans to feed 1.2 million Gazans, with international aid groups expected to support the remainder.  The monthly total amounts to roughly half a billion shekels, equivalent to approximately $143 million USD. However, this estimate appears significantly understated.

According to GHF, the figure is intended to cover not only pre-packaged meals, but also hygiene kits and the delivery of medical supplies. As if that were not enough, GHF states that the quoted price also covers procurement, logistics, food distribution, and security for the distribution centers.  “Just the box used to package the food can cost between 2 and 5 shekels (up to about $1.50 USD),” a source involved in food distribution for vulnerable populations told Haaretz. “You also have to hire packing teams, cover transportation costs, pay for fuel and even cover the price of masking tape.”

Israel’s Defense and Finance Ministries declined to say whether the government is funding the operation. They also refused to comment on whether Israel has provided guarantees, allowing goods to be purchased on credit with the expectation that other parties will cover the costs later.

The U.S. State Department similarly declined to respond to questions on the matter, as did the GHF.

Israeli opposition leaders, however, argued on Tuesday that Israel is providing the funding. Opposition leader Yair Lapid urged the government to officially confirm that it is financing the aid.

Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman took to X, saying, “The money for the humanitarian aid is coming from the Mossad and the Defense Ministry – hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of Israeli citizens.”  “I don’t have any proof, but as someone who knows these systems well, it’s clear to me when I see such a construction,” Lieberman told Haaretz on Wednesday. “You have a foundation that appeared out of nowhere, and a company operating without a background or experience.”

“It seems obvious,” Lieberman continued, “even if they’re U.S.-registered, the entity that initiated and pushed for the operation is Israel or parties acting on its behalf.”  “It’s being done in a blatant and clumsy way,” he added. “What’s happened here is that aid to Gaza that was previously funded internationally is now being financed by Israel.”

“We’re talking about costs in the hundreds of millions to maintain hundreds of armed Americans with combat experience and to provide food,” Lieberman added. “If that’s the case, I don’t understand who approved of this move. I doubt it even received legal authorization,” he said.

The government fears its base

If Israel is indeed funding the project, providing guarantees or offering temporary financing until donations are collected, it becomes clear why the government wants to keep this under wraps.

Politically, the government fears backlash from its base if it becomes known that Israeli taxpayers are funding food aid to Gaza residents. On the other hand, in Gaza, if it is revealed that Israel is covering the costs, Hamas may attempt to sabotage the effort.

This concern is reflected in recent statements from Gaza-based companies affiliated with SRS, particularly regarding the operation of food distribution centers.  One of these family-owned companies issued a statement earlier this week to its business partners, saying, “While our people in Gaza endure a war of extermination and ongoing aggression, and as the Israeli occupation’s plan to establish mass detention camps, the so-called humanitarian zones in Rafah, we were shocked to find the name of a person called Ahmed Shahada [a pseudonym] listed as part of the engineering team collaborating with a U.S. company involved in this inhumane program.

“The program aims to tighten the Israeli siege, deepen the suffering of our people through ‘starvation engineering’ and deny civilians their most basic rights to life and dignity,” the statement added.

The reluctance of Gaza-based companies to get involved in the distribution could also explain the chaos seen in the Gaza Strip in the past days.

According to sources in the Israeli food industry, small food distributors in Israel have recently been purchasing food, much of it supplied by vendors in the West Bank, and have begun packing cartons destined for Gaza. Most of the goods arriving in the West Bank through SRS are imported from abroad.

SRS’s original plan to make a single bulk purchase of all the food proved impossible, due both to a lack of funding and the unavailability of the required quantities within Israel.

Despite questions regarding the funding and the economic feasibility of the pricing set by GHF for its aid project, the U.S. State Department announced on Tuesday that 8,000 boxes have already been distributed in Gaza, each containing enough food for 5.5 people for 3.5 days, totaling 462,000 meals delivered so far.

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