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HAMAS ATTACKS AID GROUP, CHALLENGING ISRAEL’S GAZA PLAN | Avi Melamed’s insights quoted in the article by Mac William Bishop for Rolling Stones.
“Distribution of food and humanitarian aid is one of the major tools that Hamas uses as a means to maintain its ruling capacity, and for the time being, to maintain its relationship with the major clans or families in the Gaza Strip,” says Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and Arab affairs specialist.
He notes instances of organized looting outside the control of Hamas, saying Israel’s aid blockades have created a “volatile dynamic” in the relations between the political group and the network of Gaza’s powerful clans — perhaps intentionally.
Israel’s strategy with aid in Gaza “mostly has to do with the whole issue of putting pressure on Hamas, in the sense of neutralizing or limiting its ability to continue to dictate its agenda… it is basically trying to reduce or minimize as much as possible [Hamas’] governance capacity and role in the Gaza Strip.”
Melamed, the former Israeli intelligence officer, is skeptical that Israel will succeed in neutralizing Hamas by controlling aid, or even through continued military action.
“Hamas is not going to disappear. At the end of the day, it’s part and parcel of the Palestinian system,” he says
An ambush allegedly carried out by Hamas on Wednesday killed at least eight Palestinian aid workers, with an unknown number of others taken hostage, according to an aid group.
The apparent massacre makes clear that Hamas, even after a year and half of deadly military strikes carried out by Israel that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, remains operational. It also underscores the difficulties faced by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose local Palestinian employees were the target of the attack.
“We are still collecting more information on the deadly and unprovoked attack on our dedicated local team members and volunteers. As of now, we can confirm at least eight fatalities, multiple injuries, and we fear that some of our team members have been taken hostage,” GHF Interim Executive Director John Acree said in a statement.
“This attack did not happen in a vacuum. For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team, our aid workers, and the civilians who receive aid from us,” a GHF spokesperson said in a statement. “The GHF holds Hamas fully responsible for taking the lives of our dedicated workers who have been distributing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people at the foundation’s sites in central and southern Gaza. Tonight, the world must see this for what it is: an attack on humanity.”
Indeed, nothing surrounding GHF has occurred in a vacuum. Since its inception earlier this year, the foundation has been a focal point of criticism from international aid groups, human rights organizations, and pro-Palestinian activists.
In mid-May, more than two dozen burly Americans arrived in Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, with photos of the men circulating across social media and local news outlets speculating about their purpose.
Private military contractors – mercenaries – had previously been hired by two U.S. security companies to work in Gaza manning checkpoints, under the sanction of the Israel Defense Forces. But the group that arrived in Tel Aviv represented something new. They were the vanguard of GHF, a newly established non-profit intended to place the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza outside the purview of the United Nations — and under the control of the Israeli government.
The Israeli military has strictly controlled access to Gaza since Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, 2023, and humanitarian groups cannot deliver aid to the territory without its cooperation. Israel has periodically restricted or blocked aid deliveries, to the point that aid groups have regularly issued warnings of imminent famine. The most recent blockade started on March 2, and continued until mid-May.
Some aid groups have described the aid blockade as a deliberate strategy, designed to starve the civilian population of Gaza, and some have even called it a war crime, or part of an overall plan to ethnically cleanse the territory.
Others see a motive that is equally ruthless, but with a more immediate political goal: By cutting out aid groups with established ground operations, and putting Gaza aid in the hands of a friendly non-profit, Tel Aviv hopes to reduce Hamas’ influence. Tel Aviv has long viewed the UN and its local agency, UNRWA, as essentially under the control of Hamas, and antipathetic to Israel’s existence.
“Distribution of food and humanitarian aid is one of the major tools that Hamas uses as a means to maintain its ruling capacity, and for the time being, to maintain its relationship with the major clans or families in the Gaza Strip,” says Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and Arab affairs specialist.
He notes instances of organized looting outside the control of Hamas, saying Israel’s aid blockades have created a “volatile dynamic” in the relations between the political group and the network of Gaza’s powerful clans — perhaps intentionally.
Israel’s strategy with aid in Gaza “mostly has to do with the whole issue of putting pressure on Hamas, in the sense of neutralizing or limiting its ability to continue to dictate its agenda… it is basically trying to reduce or minimize as much as possible [Hamas’] governance capacity and role in the Gaza Strip.”
The men behind GHF are a hodgepodge of former military and intelligence officials, backed by Israeli tech billionaires, an Armenian financier with a checkered past, and tens of millions of dollars from unknown donors.
The international version of GHF was established as a stiftung — the designation for a nonprofit foundation in Switzerland — on Feb. 11 this year, according to documents published by the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce.
Its purpose was “specifically to provide humanitarian aid to those affected by the conflict in the Gaza Strip, including the secure provision of food, water, medicine, shelter, and reconstruction.”
The president of the foundation was listed as David Papazian, an Armenian investor. A brief examination of Papazian reveals a curious background for an aid executive, with links to a 2015 insider-trading cyber-hacking scandal, ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and a key role in development projects funded by the United Arab Emirates while head of Armenia’s state-backed development fund — a position from which he was ousted in January 2024 amid questions about his governance.
Another individual listed in the GHF’s international documents was David Kohler, a Cologne-based and “Swiss-registered lawyer with experience in handling complex cross-border transactions, contract and corporate matters, capital markets and financing issues,” who has “significant experience in representing clients in Europe, the U.S., the Middle East and Russia,” according to his LinkedIn profile. On May 14, as questions about the foundation’s legitimacy and ability to deliver aid proliferated, Kohler resigned from the stiftung’s board.
The final person listed on GHF’s Swiss registration is Loik Henderson, an Arlington-based lawyer who serves as general counsel for Protection Services Inc., a private security company that provides “comprehensive security solutions and personnel security expertise to the U.S. government.” Henderson is also listed as the president of GHF in its U.S. incorporation documents.
Where the money for all of this is coming from is not clear — GHF officials have talked about receiving a “$100 million donation” from an unspecified source. One Middle Eastern intelligence source tells Rolling Stone a substantial amount of money was most likely provided by the UAE, which has been quietly working with both Israel and the Trump administration behind the scenes in Gaza. The U.S. State Department is also considering funneling $500 million to GHF, Reuters reported last week.
In addition, The Washington Post reported that two Israeli tech moguls were backing GHF, naming them as “Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians. Another was Michael Eisenberg, an American Israeli venture capitalist who argued that existing U.N. aid distribution networks were sustaining Hamas and needed to be overhauled.”
On the ground, two private security contract firms have been tied to GHF, with Reuters reporting one as “UG Solutions — a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina,” which began hiring security personnel earlier this year, offering “a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires.”
According to The New York Times, GHF’s security and logistics plan appears to have been developed under the direction of Israel, working with Safe Reach Solutions, a newly formed Wyoming-based company headed by Phillip F. Reilly, a retired CIA paramilitary officer and former agency station chief in Afghanistan.
Amid this panoply of international lawyers, guns, and money, GHF also went looking for officials from the humanitarian sector with the experience and gravitas to lend the organization credibility.
Initial documents from the foundation listed a number of respected veterans of international aid work for potential senior positions. These included David Beasley, the former head of the World Food Program, and Nate Mook, the former chief executive of World Central Kitchen.
Both men subsequently denied they had agreed to join the organization.
The man who did become the public face of GHF was Jake Wood, a former U.S. Marine and social entrepreneur best known for co-founding Team Rubicon, a veteran-based emergency response nonprofit. As it prepared to begin operations, Wood took to the airwaves, describing the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza and calling on international aid organizations to work with GHF, rather than criticize it.
His leadership was short-lived. On May 26, as the media furor swelled ahead of GHF’s first deployment, Wood announced he was resigning from the foundation, saying he no longer believed in its “neutrality, impartiality and independence.”
Veteran aid workers, who had been saying this from the start, were celebratory.
“I hope this idea of having a privatized, militarized, and politicized humanitarian aid organization is gone forever,” says Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “We cannot work with Hamas, and we cannot work with Israel.”
But GHF was far from finished. An evangelical activist with close ties to President Donald Trump, Rev. Johnnie Moore, was appointed as chairman of GHF after Wood’s departure.
Since it started operations at the end of May, scenes of food distribution sites run by GHF — densely packed crowds of refugees gathered in the hot sun, corralled into mazes of chain link fencing to wait for hours for the chance to receive food supplies — confirmed the fears of many critics that the group was in over its head.
A series of deadly incidents involving people gathering to collect food at GHF-run distribution sites have resulted in dozens killed, with Palestinians claiming the Israeli military was responsible. Israel, in turn, has disavowed responsibility. Meanwhile, the GHF has been adamant that none of the incidents at distribution sites were the result of actions taken by its personnel.
“As we have repeatedly cautioned, there are many parties who wish to see GHF fail. Their goal is to force a return to the status quo, even if it means risking life-saving aid to the people of Gaza,” a GHF spokesperson wrote on May 28.
Since beginning operations, GHF says that it has delivered 19 million meals at four sites, with three remaining operational. The attack on the busload of Palestinians working for GHF makes it clear that the group is in the crosshairs of Hamas. For now, it continues its operations.
“This has been a painful day but our team made the decision that the best way to honor the memory of our local Palestinian colleagues was to press on, proceeding with food distribution today, as planned,” wrote Moore, the GHF chairman. “We provided food for 2.6 million meals TODAY.”
Contrary to the neutrality espoused by most international aid groups, GHF has been explicit that it views Hamas as the primary barrier to delivery of aid in Gaza.
“Hamas wants to return to a broken system it once controlled and exploited — diverting aid, manipulating distribution, and putting its own agenda ahead of the Palestinian people’s basic needs,” a GHF spokesperson said.
Melamed, the former Israeli intelligence officer, is skeptical that Israel will succeed in neutralizing Hamas by controlling aid, or even through continued military action.
“Hamas is not going to disappear. At the end of the day, it’s part and parcel of the Palestinian system,” he says.
HAMAS ATTACKS AID GROUP, CHALLENGING ISRAEL’S GAZA PLAN | Avi Melamed’s insights quoted in the article by Mac William Bishop for Rolling Stones.
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