WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has authorized providing $30 million to a US- and Israeli-backed group that is distributing food in Gaza, a US official said Tuesday, an operation that has drawn criticism from other humanitarian organizations.
The request is the first known US government funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution efforts amid the Israel-Hamas war. The American-led group had applied for the money to the US Agency for International Development, which has been dismantled and will soon be absorbed into the State Department as part of the Trump administration’s deep cuts of foreign aid.
The application is part of a controversial development: private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue involving a controversial aid program, said the decision to directly fund GHF was made “to provide effective and accessible humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.”
The announcement comes as violence and chaos have plagued areas near the new food distribution sites since opening last month. GHF says no one has been killed at the aid sites themselves and that it has delivered some 44 million meals to Palestinians in need.
