Lapid suggests Israel is funding foreign ‘shell companies’ distributing Gaza aid
Netanyahu’s spokesperson denies allegations, says ‘Israel does not fund the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accused the government of secretly funding humanitarian aid for Gaza through two foreign “shell companies” on Monday evening, an assertion quickly denied by the Prime Minister’s Office.
“Our job is to ask the government tough questions, and, with such a question, I take the podium today. Is the State of Israel behind two shell companies established in Switzerland and the United States, GHF and SRS, to organize and finance humanitarian aid in Gaza?” Lapid asked from the Knesset rostrum, ahead of a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Monday morning, Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the distribution of assistance under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) had begun, launching a system that Israel says is meant to keep aid from being diverted to the Hamas terror group.
With pressure building over humanitarian conditions in the Strip, GHF said in a statement Monday that it would be opening the first of a number of planned distribution points within hours, and aid would reach at least a million Palestinians — about half of the enclave’s population — by the end of the week.
Under the plan, preselected family representatives would be able to pick up boxes of food for their families from a small number of distribution sites in southern Gaza. The zones are secured and operated by private American security contractors, who arrived in the region earlier this month.
Two American companies, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, were selected by GHF to serve as onsite contractors.
Monday’s announcement came only hours after GHF CEO Jake Wood abruptly resigned, saying it would be impossible to implement the plan while “strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”
“Could it be that the Israeli security services were sent by the prime minister and the finance minister to move Israeli funds abroad, so that they would return to Gaza as humanitarian aid?” Lapid asked.
“The important word here is ‘independence,’” Lapid stated. “Jake Wood understood that he was being played. The big question is whether we are not being played too. If this money is Israeli, if it comes from the state treasury, the State of Israel should not and cannot hide it.”
While technically an American company, GHF was established in close coordination with Israeli authorities in order to manage a new model for distributing humanitarian aid in the Strip in a manner that does not allow its diversion by Hamas.
However, according to The New York Times, the project was not only built in coordination with Israel, but is “an Israeli brainchild,” proposed during a 2023 meeting of “like-minded officials, military officers, and business people with close ties to the Israeli government.”
The group’s central idea was to bypass traditional aid channels like the UN by hiring private contractors to distribute aid in pockets of Gaza under Israeli control, thus weakening Hamas’s grip without formally assuming responsibility for Gaza’s civilian population.
Another key revelation of The New York Times report was that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was registered in the US, not in Switzerland, as had previously been believed.
It is also unclear who is funding the GHF, which claims to have more than $100 million in commitments from a foreign government donor, but has not named that party.
Wood said it received a small amount of seed money from unnamed non-Israeli businessmen. The foundation said in a statement that a Western European country had donated over $100 million, but declined to name the country, according to the Times.
According to a separate Haaretz report published yesterday, Safe Reach Solutions entered Gaza without security clearance from the Shin Bet, as is the procedure.
Though Wood said the two groups now operate independently, GHF and SRS were registered by the same US lawyer and shared a spokeswoman until recently.
To hide the source of the money would constitute a “fraud” against the Israeli people and “one of the greatest acts of political folly in the history of the state,” Lapid declared on Monday.
“If our tax money is buying humanitarian aid, financing food and medicine for children in Gaza, let’s profit from it in the international arena” by announcing it, he said.
“The Israeli government should have some dignity, say out loud that it funds these two organizations, and do the thing it hates to do the most: take responsibility for the things it does, and bear the consequences.”
Responding to Lapid, Netanyahu spokesperson Omer Dostri said that “Israel does not fund the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip. Israel and the United States are working in full coordination and through various channels to cut off aid from reaching Hamas.”
Dostri did not say who was funding the aid.
Israel began allowing aid to trickle into the Strip last week, after cutting off deliveries of assistance since early March, when it abandoned a two-month ceasefire that saw an influx of food and other supplies into the Strip.
The decision to allow aid to start flowing again coincided with the start of the IDF’s new, major offensive in the Strip dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots,” the goal of which is to defeat Hamas, pressure the group to release 58 remaining hostages it is holding and retake security control of the Strip.
Israel says it must take control of aid distribution, arguing that Hamas and other terrorists siphon off supplies and that some aid organizations have been infiltrated by terror groups. Aid workers deny there is a significant diversion of aid to terrorists, saying the UN strictly monitors distribution.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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