The Trump administration has authorised a $30m grant to the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, making the US a direct backer of an aid organisation that is closely linked to private security contractors and has been accused by critics of “politicising” the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
According to a document seen by the Guardian, the state department has already disbursed $7m to GHF, a US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation that has been given preferential access to operate in Gaza because it says that it can deliver millions of meals to starving people without that food falling into the hands of Hamas.
But its rollout has been chaotic, with Israeli forces killing hundreds of people near distribution centres policed by private military contractors and Israeli soldiers, resignations by senior leadership who have said the humanitarian organisation’s mission was “politicised”, and reports of close ties and collaboration with the Israeli government.
Insiders said that the application for the grant was rushed through the state department unusually quickly, especially for a first-time applicant that should undergo an audit to receive USAID funding.
“It was pushed through over the technical and ethical objections of career staff,” a source told the Guardian.
The state department decision to issue the grant was first reported by Reuters.
The state department refused to confirm or deny the reports. “We are not going to comment on internal deliberations,” a state department spokesperson told the Guardian. “We are constantly looking for creative solutions to get aid into Gaza without it being looted by Hamas, and GHF stepped up.”
Sources told Reuters that GHF may be given $30m each month to help fund its operating costs in Gaza. The grants appeared to be rushed through USAID, which is in the process of being rolled into the state department in a major shakeup of US aid disbursement abroad.
In a letter sent on Monday to GHF and the affiliated Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, advocates from 15 international human rights organisations warned that private contractors operating in Gaza in collaboration with the Israeli government risk “aiding and abetting or otherwise being complicit in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide”.
Top Democrats have also criticised GHF. In a letter to Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, obtained by the Guardian, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said that support for GHF “marks an alarming departure from the professional humanitarian organizations that have worked on the ground, in Gaza and elsewhere, for decades”.
