Searching for answers about US-backed aid agency in Gaza

The road to Dover, Delaware, is lined with barns and giant wheat fields and all the other signs of American abundance. But on this journey, the scene only highlights the devastating contrast between peace and war. We're driving here because in this rural heartland lie clues to what's behind a highly contested development thousands of miles away on the ground in Gaza. The new US- and Israeli-backed entity created to feed the territory, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), was registered here in Delaware two weeks after US President Donald Trump took office. Little is known about the group, which has been at the centre of global headlines amid scenes of chaos and deadly incidents nearly every day as desperate Palestinians have tried to reach its sites. Eyewitnesses recently reported Israeli forces firing on crowds heading to an aid site. Israel says it is investigating while also accusing Hamas of trying to sabotage the operations. The GHF said on Thursday that eight of its local Palestinian workers were killed when Hamas attacked one of their buses. And in the latest deadly incident, at least 15 Palestinians were killed on Saturday by Israeli fire, local hospitals said. The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots at a group they believed posed a potential threat, and an aircraft struck one person who moved towards them. On our journey in Delaware to find out more about the GHF, the search yields many clues but few definitive answers. GHF established itself saying it intended to feed civilians in Gaza, where the United Nations has said more than two million people are at risk of starvation. The foundation, which uses armed American security contractors, bypasses the UN as the main supplier of aid in Gaza. Critics see the GHF as enabling a plan by the Israeli government to displace Palestinians south into smaller areas of Gaza. But Israel - which has long sought to remove the UN as the major humanitarian provider to Palestinians - argues the alternative system was needed to stop Hamas stealing aid. Hamas denies that, while the posture of the previous US administration of President Joe Biden was that if supplies were being diverted, it was not at any scale that possibly could justify blockading aid to Gaza. In March, Israel cut off all food and other aid supplies to Gaza as it resumed its war against Hamas following a two-month ceasefire. Israel said the step, which has been widely condemned, was taken to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. The UN and aid groups demanded access, while international condemnation of Israel grew. In the midst of this standoff emerged the GHF, promoted by Israel and championed by the Trump administration. But virtually nothing was known about its provenance and, crucially, who was funding it. In early May, a 14-page leaked document circulated among aid groups and journalists. It set out the concept behind GHF - to provide aid to Palestinians from several collection super-hubs in Gaza, secured by armed private contractors and ultimately, beyond their perimeter, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The initiative appeared to be designed to bypass the UN as the major provider. Among the executives or advisers listed in the document were Nate Mook, a former boss of the charity World Central Kitchen; David Beasley, a former World Food Program chief (listed as "to be finalized"); and Jake Wood, a US Marine Corps veteran and disaster-response expert. It also listed a retired US lieutenant-general on its advisory board. But by phoning around those who knew some of the background, it became clear that neither Mr Mook nor Mr Beasley was in fact part of the foundation. The document appeared to be a wish list to try to build support and possibly private donations for the fund. There were no clues as to the authorship of the leaked text, however. So who was really running the GHF? Jake Wood did indeed become the executive director, but within a fortnight he resigned saying the project breached the humanitarian principles of "humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence", which he said he would not abandon. In our search to find out more, we pull up in Dover's quaint downtown. A woman in costume is giving a guided history tour. This is a place you come to hear about wars past not present. We drive to the address listed in a public records search for the GHF. It's a red brick building with wooden doors and no doorbell. Inside, in a corridor, two women emerge from an office. They try to assist but say they can't help because they don't know anything specifically about GHF. The address is in fact an agent for incorporating firms - registering them legally - in Delaware, a state known for a less intrusive approach to company transparency. I ask the women why an organisation would have its registered address here, but not be based here. "So they're not bothered," says one with a smile. We're back on the road, and I send some messages to the spokesman of the GHF, a newly appointed role that is being undertaken by a US-based public relations professional. I've been asking for days for an on-the-record interview with him, or the new executive director. I've asked for confirmation about who is funding GHF and who else is on the board, but nothing is forthcoming. Such an apparent lack of transparency for a humanitarian group is a "critical" issue, says Bill Deere, Washington DC office director for the UN's Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. His agency has been the core focus of the Israeli government's attempts to sever the relationship between the UN and Gaza's population, and it was this year banned from operating in Israel. Mr Deere says: "For folks who like or dislike the UN and its agencies, you can always track our money. "We're very transparent about where our funding comes from. By contrast… no-one really knows very much about this [GHF]." He describes the new aid project as "a Hunger Games distribution network", a reference to a dystopian fiction saga. Mr Deere is calling for the UN to be allowed fully back into Gaza to get food aid to Palestinians again professionally, and at scale. "I do not know, I cannot fathom, as a UN employee or even as an American, how the world can accept this situation," he adds. Other UN agencies and aid groups have escalated their criticism of the GHF project. They believe the GHF is breaching the fundamental humanitarian principle of independence. In other words, they argue that if aid providers working in a conflict are seen as taking a side, those workers and the aid recipients risk becoming targets. They say the GHF has militarised the aid supply, endangering civilians who also have to cross front lines to get to the distribution sites, while disadvantaging the weak and sick. For its part, Israel alleges that UNWRA is not neutral. Last year, after accusations made by Israel, the UN fired nine staff out of UNRWA's 17,000-strong workforce, saying they may have been involved in the October 7 attacks. It didn't specify what they were accused of, while UNRWA says the initial claims have still not been proven. In the Gaza war, according to the agency, at least 310 UNRWA workers have been killed, the vast majority of them by the Israeli army. I press Bill Deere, of UNRWA, on Israel and GHF's criticism, that Hamas was diverting aid under the UN system. He says Israel has never offered proof. "This is just a made-up excuse in order to create a system that looks like it's helping people without actually helping people," he says. As we continue our search to find out more about GHF, I make my way to the official Delaware state building that holds company records. Our team has requested GHF's certificate of incorporation and other linked documents. A woman who works in the records office hands us three pages stapled together. They reveal only the address of the agents we've just visited, and that the GHF changed its name from the "Global Humanitarian Fund" to the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" on 28 April. It's signed "Loik Henderson, President". According to the leaked May document, Mr Henderson is a lawyer "with decades of experience [including] Fortune 500 companies". We try to reach him by phone, but get no response. The next day, a statement arrives from a GHF email address, which isn't attributed to any named press officer and contains no numbers to reach its media operation. It says the foundation has given out 19 lorry loads of food that day. The UN system was getting in 600 per day during the ceasefire. For a population of more than two million people, the current daily amount is clearly nowhere near enough; borne out by images of an apocalyptic scene as desperate crowds have descended from barren, sandy dunes over fences into one aid site this week. The email contains a section entitled "inaccurate news reporting", having earlier in the week heavily criticised media organisations for "fabricated and exaggerated narratives". The foundation has distanced itself from the series of deadly incidents, saying no-one was shot at its sites. GHF executive director John Acree is quoted in the email as saying the foundation has so far given out 8.5m meals "without incident". The BBC can't verify the accuracy of GHF's measure for the number of meals in each of its food boxes. Last Saturday, the GHF controversy deepened as one of the world's top consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group, said it had sacked two partners for their role in helping to set up the foundation. The chief executive apologised to staff saying the group was "shocked and outraged" that the two senior employees had carried out unauthorised work on the project. Alex de Waal, an expert in famine and aid supply in war at Tufts University in Massachusetts, likens the concept currently being rolled out in Gaza to colonial-era counter-insurgency attempts. "The thinking of the military as they mount operations like this is that they will be able to deny all resources to an insurgent group, forcing its members to surrender through hunger and forcing a civilian population to turn against it," he says. Israel strongly rejects any suggestion it uses hunger as a weapon of war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said Israel "must avoid famine [in Gaza], both for practical reasons and diplomatic ones". Israel has also rejected mounting international criticism of the GHF project. And it has denied allegations in the Israeli media, and raised by opposition leader Yair Lapid, that the Israeli government has secretly funded GHF. Netanyahu's office says Israel and the US are working in co-ordination "to cut off aid from reaching Hamas", as he escalates Israel's offensive in Gaza, arguing that "military pressure" will help force Hamas to release the hostages it holds. He adds that "Israel does not fund the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip". The US government has also said it is not funding the foundation. Back on the road, we try to reach the GHF executive director John Acree, a former US government humanitarian official. Last month, contacted via LinkedIn, he told me he would not be doing interviews, but did later put me in touch with the foundation's new spokesman, who has so far declined any on-the-record comments. On Wednesday last week, a woman at Mr Acree's home told me he was currently in Tel Aviv. The foundation also emailed a press release saying that it had appointed an executive chairman, Reverend Johnnie Moore, a Christian evangelical preacher and public relations executive. Mr Moore is a strong supporter of Israel and was among President Trump's evangelical "advisory board" of faith leaders who laid hands on the president and prayed for him in the Oval Office. In a Fox News website article, Mr Moore launched a scathing attack on the UN system. "Activists disguised as humanitarians clutch their pearls and rush out press releases in support of these failed systems," said Mr Moore. "They keep spreading with no scrutiny the profane lies of Hamas." We return to Washington DC after our searches in Delaware. My phones buzzes with a message from a colleague saying thousands of hungry Palestinians have looted an aid truck in central Gaza, as desperation over food shortages mounts. Meanwhile, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation released videos of Palestinians thanking President Trump behind the wire fences of its distribution sites. Politics has become a main ingredient of Gaza's aid - but we find few real answers about who's really behind it. Additional reporting by Alex Lederman