1 of 2 | Displaced Palestinians pictured in August gathering aid from the US humanitarian aid distribution “Netzarim corridor” in the central Gaza Strip. On Monday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said its five-month run ended after fulfilling a large part of its planned mission to distribute much-needed food and supplies to displaced Palestinians. File Photo by Hassan Al-Jadi/UPI | License Photo
An on-the-ground organization in Gaza distributing critical aid to Palestinians in the strip has officially ceased operating after less than a year.
On Monday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said its five-month run ended after fulfilling a large part of its planned mission to distribute much-needed food and supplies to displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, The Times of Israel and CNN reported.
“From the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need, prove that a new approach could succeed where others had failed, and ultimately hand off that success to the broader international community,” according to John Acree, GHF’s executive director.
Acree said a new mechanism, the Civil-Military Coordination Center, will adopt the GHF model to disperse aid, which was designed to prevent Hamas from diverting global aid supplies at a very small number of militarized hubs.
“With the creation of the Civil-Military Coordination Center and a rejuvenated engagement of the international humanitarian community, GHF believes that moment has now arrived” to pass hands, Acree added in a statement.
The NGO was reportedly in the middle of financial worries and locked out of humanitarian field operations following the new Gaza cease-fire agreement.
Over the summer, more than 100 human rights groups and international aid charities called for the Israel-U.S.-backed mechanism for distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza to be scrapped.
That arrived after at least 500 Palestinian refugees were killed and 4,000 injured in its first month of operating.
Israel froze all supplies of food, water and medicine to the region of an estimated 2.5 million people following the cease-fire between Israel and militant-run Hamas ended on March 1.
The United Nations said Gazans were at a “critical risk of famine” with 1 in 5, or 500,000, that faced starvation as the war raged since Iran’s terror syndicate Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
GHF said it managed to distribute more than 187 million to the some 2 million displaced in Gaza.
Meanwhile, promises made by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to expand from three to 16 humanitarian hubs never did come to fruition.
