There are currently four main sites in Gaza where Palestinians can receive humanitarian aid. The sites, which were opened two months ago, are run by a nonprofit called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (G.H.F.) and supported by the governments of Israel and the United States. Previously, the United Nations and other groups distributed aid at hundreds of locations; that system, which was frequently stymied by Israel preventing aid from entering Gaza, was largely replaced by the G.H.F.’s four sites. More than seven hundred and fifty people seeking aid at the sites have been killed. The vast majority of the fatalities are attributable to soldiers with the Israel Defense Forces, though American security contractors, who help operate the sites, have also fired on Palestinians. (In a statement to The New Yorker, the G.H.F. said that, except for one incident last week, when Hamas “invoked a stampede” that killed twenty people, no one has died at or near the sites.) The G.H.F. claims that it has distributed more than eighty-five million meals, and some non-G.H.F. aid trucks are also entering Gaza. But Palestinians continue to die from malnutrition—there were eighteen such deaths in twenty-four hours this past weekend, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Before the G.H.F. sites opened, the United Nations and a variety of N.G.O.s warned Israeli officials that they were likely to be dangerous and ineffective; despite the death toll, the Israeli government and the G.H.F. have made no effort to alter their approach.
To understand how the G.H.F. was formed, and what its intentions are, I recently spoke by phone with Michael Milshtein, the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University. Milshtein was previously the head of the Department for Palestinian Affairs in the I.D.F.’s military-intelligence wing, and a senior adviser to the commander of COGAT, which supervises civilian policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why the G.H.F. has been such a disaster for Palestinians, the Israeli government’s motives for its creation, and how the war aims of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, have changed.
How do you understand what we’re seeing almost daily at these G.H.F. sites? What is actually going on?
In Israeli discourse, I’m known as a critical voice, someone who was against the G.H.F. idea from even before the formal establishment of this organization. And right now I consider this whole project to be a total failure. The basic goals, or the basic expectations, for this project were to create a buffer between the Palestinian public and Hamas, and to make Hamas’s power much more limited. But it has been a total failure. And it’s not surprising, because since Day One you could see the seeds of the failure. For starters, the number of people in this organization is very small. I think it’s less than a thousand. [The G.H.F. told The New Yorker that it would not confirm how many employees it has “for security reasons.”] And it’s only four sites, or four stations, for distribution of food and water. I’m speaking with people in Gaza, and they are describing the situation to me. It is chaos. Almost every day there are shootings, from both the I.D.F. and American contractors. [The G.H.F. denied this, saying that some of the violence has occurred when Gazans “have taken dangerous short cuts or gotten lost.”]
What was the idea for the G.H.F. initially? And who, exactly, is behind it? I still don’t feel like I have an adequate answer to either of those questions. Do you?
We’re speaking about a quite bizarre group of people. The most prominent is Roman Gofman, the military secretary of Netanyahu. There were also several businessmen and analysts who were involved here in Israel. But this was a group of people who don’t really know Gaza. When I read about this project, it seemed exactly like the American idea about changing hearts and minds before the war of 2003 in Iraq. The idea was to engineer the minds of the people by changing the situation, by controlling the food and controlling the water. From my point of view, it’s a reflection of the fact that they don’t really understand the Palestinian people, and they don’t really understand how things are going in Gaza, because even if people can get food from the G.H.F. they will not become affiliated with Israel. This won’t change the loyalty that some people have to Hamas. So, unfortunately, it was a waste of time, a waste of energy, and a waste of the lives of a lot of Palestinians. I’m very disappointed that here in Israel people are not willing to declare, in a clear manner, that this project is a failure.
You are saying that the goal for people around Netanyahu was to break Palestinians’ reliance on, or loyalty to, Hamas? I find that slightly hard to believe.
Yeah, it was very naïve.
But you think that was sincerely the purpose?
Sure. Absolutely. I read several arguments made by the people who were a part of this initiative.
When?
Yotam HaCohen, one of the analysts behind this, published an article a year ago that actually described the current project. All the assumptions rely on the belief that you can really change people’s minds, and it’s all about deradicalization. They wanted to make Hamas weaker, they wanted to erase the governmental capacities of Hamas, but you really need to understand Gaza and the Palestinians better.
So, it seems like you’re saying that this was fundamentally an Israeli idea, which somehow came to involve a bunch of Americans with some connection to the Trump Administration. How did that happen? Why were the Americans brought in?
I do not know all the details. I do know that there are American citizens who are right now in Gaza and responsible for this project, but I really don’t know how it was actually created behind the scenes. There was money for this project, and there were several reports here in Israel about the sums of money that were invested. And this is Israeli money. But it seems that even the government wants to keep many secrets, and to keep the whole picture very unclear. [Israeli officials have denied that the government funds the G.H.F.] There is a big gap between the image that is presented, of a very successful project, and the truth, which is that it is a total failure. A month ago, you could convince a lot of Israelis that it was going great. But it seems to me that today there are more and more and more Israelis who are exposed to international media and do understand that this is not a successful project.
Even if you don’t know the details, why do you think that Netanyahu would want to turn some of this over to the Americans?
That’s very clear. This is a result of political considerations. Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir are the hawks in the government. They have announced repeatedly that they do not want aid to enter Gaza. And they cannot be seen as responsible in a public manner for allowing aid in. So Netanyahu found a very tricky way to establish this project. But the title above it will not be Israeli. And that’s why, two or three weeks ago, when there were several reports about the fact that Israel actually is financing this project, it really disturbed the government. It’s very clear that the American involvement is related to political considerations. It is a question of image.
That would also explain why the old aid system, which was operated in part through the United Nations, couldn’t continue to go on as before—because essentially Netanyahu had political considerations to keep his coalition with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir together?
Yes, but the old system still partially continues. And, actually, much of the food and the supplies that enter Gaza today come by the old ways, not by the G.H.F. So right now it seems that it’s a kind of a theatre. And, of course, the Palestinians know that the G.H.F. is a failure. They know these sites as places where you can maybe get a box of food, but you can also be killed. When I spoke with people from Gaza City, they told me, Listen, if I want to arrive at the site, which is in the southern part of the city, the taxi-driver would charge a thousand shekels [approximately three hundred dollars]. It’s very risky to make the drive. You can be attacked by choppers, by drones, by anything. Second, they told me that, in the place itself, it’s very risky. There are shootings. The Americans are very nervous, and the I.D.F. is also very nervous. Some of them said that they saw Hamas members also shooting in these areas. One of them told me it’s the valley of death. You can enter and take whatever you want, but you won’t always get out. So the image of this project and the perception of the four sites is very, very negative.
Do you think the government is likely to change course?
We in Israel prefer fantasies instead of a realistic strategy. And the G.H.F. is one of four fantasies. There is also the encouragement of clans in Gaza. There is the “humanitarian city.” And there is the belief that you can really implement Trump’s vision. [Trump has said that he wants to turn the Gaza Strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East” and fill it with “the world’s people,” as Gazans are moved elsewhere.]
This “humanitarian city” is the project of the government. Netanyahu has a crazy idea of taking Palestinians and concentrating them in a very small place between Khan Younis and Rafah, and to establish a kind of “humanitarian city.” He called it that, but, actually, it would be tents with no civil infrastructure. And, therefore, you can isolate them from Hamas, and maybe you can even create schools of deradicalization. It’s a total illusion. And Eyal Zamir, the chief of the I.D.F. general staff, really opposes this idea. There have been many tough clashes between the political decision-makers and the generals, because the Army argues that this is not a primary mission for soldiers to do. As for the political decision-makers, they are, as I mentioned before, true believers. They believe in that vision. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir do not care about the diplomatic results. They believe that they can redesign the land between the river and the sea, to create a new situation.
