UN Rejects New Humanitarian Plan to Help Palestinian Civilians in Gaza

The United Nations’ senior officials from Secretary General Antonio Guterres on down have blamed only Israel for the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They claim that Israel, as the supposed “occupying power” in Gaza, is responsible for ensuring that the basic needs of the Palestinian civilians are met and that Israel has failed to do so.

The United Nations would rather enable Hamas to score more propaganda points than work with Israel and the United States

They continue to ignore Hamas’s refusal to end the war by immediately releasing all the remaining hostages and laying down its arms, as even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked Hamas to do. And they ignore Hamas’s theft of food and other critical supplies, which the terrorist organization has diverted for its own use or has sold in the black market at outrageous prices.

The United Nations would rather enable Hamas to score more propaganda points than work with Israel and the United States on their new humanitarian plan to deliver food and other necessities to needy Palestinian civilians in Gaza safely. Under this plan, which the UN rejected out of hand, distribution sites would be set up within Gaza where Palestinian civilians can receive vital supplies from aid workers under the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israeli soldiers would be stationed beyond the sites’ perimeters to help prevent thefts and attacks by Hamas and other violent troublemakers but would not play any direct role in the distribution of aid.

A briefing paper issued in the name of the group, as quoted by the New York Times, explained that GHF would provide a “functioning humanitarian lifeline in Gaza that mitigates suffering, upholds international humanitarian law, and demonstrates a scalable model for aid delivery in complex environments.”

According to GHF’s website, this humanitarian organization would “initially stand up four Secure Distribution Sites, each built to continuously serve 300,000 people—1.2 million Gazans in the initial phase, with capacity to expand past 2 million. Pre-packaged rations, hygiene kits, and medical supplies move through tightly controlled corridors, monitored in real time to prevent diversion.”

GHF’s Board of Directors includes Nate Mook, the former CEO of World Central Kitchen and Special Advisor on Ukraine to the Howard G Buffett Foundation.

Why the UN was negatively prejudging the Israel-U.S. plan before seeing how it works in delivering food and other relief to needy Gazan civilians?

Its Executive Director is Jake Wood, the founder and former CEO of Team Rubicon and a veteran of over 1500 disaster and humanitarian operations. The appointment of David Beasely, the former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, to GHF’s Advisory Board is being finalized.

When Israel and the U.S. proposed their plan to alleviate the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population by delivering life-saving aid safely and securely, the UN and the aid agencies it works with should have pledged their cooperation. Instead, they condemned the plan outright and said that they wanted nothing to do with it.

I asked the Secretary General’s Deputy Spokesperson on May 9^th why the UN was negatively prejudging the Israel-U.S. plan before seeing how it works in delivering food and other relief to needy Gazan civilians. He responded that “what has been presented to us appears designed to further control and restrict supplies down to the last calorie and the last grain of flour. The Secretary-General has made it clear that the UN will not engage in any arrangement that fails to uphold the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has committed itself to these very same humanitarian principles that the Secretary General enunciated. The difference is that, unlike the UN, GHF has a realistic plan that seeks to deliver vital aid with security measures to prevent theft and diversion by Hamas and other evil doers. Complaints that the proposed distribution sites will be too few and far between are bogus. GHF intends to scale up a secure distribution infrastructure and has offered to “partner with NGOs, UN agencies, and civil society organizations to facilitate the movement and distribution of their aid” through this infrastructure.

Shame on the United Nations for caring less about relieving the suffering of the civilians in Gaza in a safe manner than its determination to do things its own way with no room for compromise!