Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says it began aid distribution today

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says it commenced operations in Gaza today, delivering truckloads of food to newly established distribution sites, from which the supplies were then distributed to a number of Palestinians.

The announcement follows Hebrew media reports claiming that the US- and Israel-backed GHF did not manage to begin operating in Gaza today as initially planned.

The GHF does not say how much aid was distributed, but does release photos of a number of Gazans picking up boxes of aid from a distribution site.

The GHF statement says more trucks will be delivered tomorrow and that the flow of aid will increase each day.

The foundation also condemns what it says have been Hamas death threats against aid groups who have agreed to cooperate with GHF, as well as efforts to block Gazans from reaching its distribution sites.

“It is clear that Hamas is threatened by this new operating model, and will do everything in its power to see it fail,” GHF says.

GHF also announces that John Acree has been named its interim executive director, after its previous chief resigned yesterday and indicated that Israeli restrictions were preventing the initiative from being able to adhere to humanitarian principles.

Acree is a “senior humanitarian practitioner with more than two decades of global field experience in disaster response, stabilization programming, and civil-military coordination,” GHF says.

GHF was created earlier this year, as Israel tried to advance a new mechanism for distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza that would prevent its diversion by Hamas.

Israel wanted to create a small number of distribution sites in southern Gaza where pre-selected family representatives would be able to pick up a heavy box full of food for their families in a zone secured and operated by American private contractors.

The GHF still needs support and cooperation from existing humanitarian organizations, as it seeks to gain credibility on the ground. That backing has yet to come, though, with the UN and other international organizations in Gaza vowing not to cooperate with the GHF, arguing that its aid initiative violates humanitarian principles by requiring Gazans to walk long distances in order to retrieve aid and limiting distribution to southern Gaza, in what would forcibly displace the Palestinian population.

A small number of lesser-known organizations have agreed to cooperate with the GHF thus far, including the US-based aid group Rahma Worldwide, whose logo is seen in the photos of boxes being distributed to Gazans today.