Long before October 7, 2023, Israel used its control over access to food, electricity, and other critical needs in Gaza to advance its political objectives. In the aftermath of Hamas’s brutal attack, those policies have been carried to unprecedented extremes. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is using its power over these essentials—in coordination with its current military offensive—to force Gaza’s civilian population into small enclaves in what many believe to be a prelude to implementing what has come to be referred to as the “Trump plan.”
The Trump Plan
The so-called Trump plan, which was unveiled by U.S. President Donald Trump during Netanyahu’s February visit to the Oval Office, calls for the “voluntary” removal of over 2 million Palestinians from Gaza. The idea, which was presented as a humanitarian gesture to enable Palestinians to escape the devastation of Gaza, is a plan of mass expulsion by another name. When questioned five days later in a Fox News interview on whether he envisioned Palestinians eventually returning to their homes in Gaza, Trump said that Palestinians would have much better housing outside of Gaza and they would not want to return.
The Trump plan was not new to Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It was an idea that had been percolating in certain circles of the Israeli government since the earliest days of the war—or even before. For Smotrich, expulsion is a concept at the core of his 2017 manifesto, “The Decisive Plan.” As early as October 17, 2023, the Israeli Misgav Institute, known for its ties to Netanyahu, published a position paper calling for the relocation of the entire Gaza population. The report described the post–October 7 situation as a “unique and rare opportunity” to evacuate Gaza’s residents, suggesting coordination with Egypt for this purpose. The Israeli paper Calcalist reported that in mid-October 2023 a document bearing the logo of the Ministry of Intelligence recommended the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the strip.
Although Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich had been careful in the past to couch their calls for the removal of Palestinians in Gaza as “voluntary” migration, Trump’s Oval Office comments went a step further. They revealed the reality of the historical moment: If Gaza is fully destroyed and its people are desperate for food and shelter, then calling for the emigration of 2 million Palestinians from Gaza can be presented as a humanitarian alternative, rather than the forcible transfer of a population—ethnic cleansing, which is illegal under international law.
On May 21, while the United States was actively involved in negotiations with Hamas regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, Netanyahu announced that the implementation of Trump’s “revolutionary” and “brilliant” plan to relocate Gaza’s civilians was an Israeli condition for ending the war.
The Siege
Nearly one month after Netanyahu’s February White House meeting, the Israeli government initiated a total blockade on all food, water, and other vital assistance into Gaza. Over ninety days later, the humanitarian situation is catastrophic. The narrow 25-mile-long Gaza Strip now has the largest percentage of people in the world experiencing the most severe level of food insecurity recorded by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system since its inception in 2004. Gaza’s entire population is facing man-made starvation conditions, and about 71,000 children and 17,000 mothers are in need of urgent medical treatment for acute hunger, according to UNICEF.
On the sixteenth day of the blockade, Israel launched a new military ground campaign in Gaza, dubbed Gideon’s Chariots. The campaign called for Israel to reoccupy Gaza and displace the entire civilian population into a single “humanitarian area” in the south. The offensive has been accompanied by widespread civilian population displacement—historically a key contributing factor for mass starvation in wartime. For much of the war, over 80 percent of the Gaza Strip has been under active evacuation orders from the Israeli military—a situation that severely diminishes the ability of humanitarian organizations to support those in need.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
In late May, the Israeli government began to allow aid into Gaza through a controversial new mechanism—the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was registered in Delaware in February by an American lawyer who also registered the private military firm Safe Reach Solutions.
Unlike UN and international humanitarian organizations, the GHF relies on U.S. private security contractors to distribute aid to those in need and on the Israeli military to secure its distribution sites. It also increases restrictions on the amount and location of humanitarian aid provided to Gazan civilians. In sharp contrast to the 400 delivery sites across Gaza supported by UN and international humanitarian organizations during the first eighteen months of the war, the GHF plans to open just four distribution hubs in Gaza. These hubs are primarily located in the south, including areas close to Rafah and the Egyptian border, and require heads of families to walk long distances to receive aid packets.
The plan to create a new private humanitarian organization grew out of meetings in late 2023 between Israeli military and businessmen with close ties to the Netanyahu government who perceived UN organizations as insufficiently pro-Israel. The aid takeover also was justified by unsupported claims that foreign aid provided by UN and international humanitarian organizations had regularly fallen into the hands of Hamas. These accusations have been repeatedly refuted by officials, including World Food Program executive director Cindy McCain and former U.S. special envoy for humanitarian issues David Satterfield. However, despite these alleged concerns, the GHF is not vetting the people who pick up food at its hubs. Instead, the group has said that it will rely on the Israeli military to screen individuals as they travel to distribution sites.
The GHF appears to be a less-than-serious effort to provide humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza and more of an instrument to facilitate Israel’s military objectives and potentially lay the ground for a plan of “voluntary” expulsion.
In particular, the GHF’s use of limited distribution points in the south requires those seeking aid to travel long distances and has been viewed as reinforcing Israeli military goals of moving Gaza’s population. The UN and aid groups have criticized the plan, saying it amounts to forcible displacement. Far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition have said that the ultimate goal is to move Palestinians to other countries.
There is growing agreement that the GHF project fails to meet minimum international standards for delivery of humanitarian aid—including adherence to the fundamental international principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. Experienced aid groups say that, as designed, GHF will not be able to provide sufficient assistance to those in need in Gaza, especially the most vulnerable—even if the initiative works as planned. These concerns led respected international aid groups and UN organizations to refuse repeated early requests to participate in the project.
On May 25, just days before the project launched, GHF’s first director, Jake Wood, resigned over concerns the organization would not be able to operate independently and in a manner that adhered to internationally accepted humanitarian principles. Days later, Wood was replaced by American evangelical leader Johnnie Moore, a Trump insider who has previously voiced support for the president’s Gaza “Riviera” plan.
The ongoing controversy surrounding the GHF has included concerns regarding extremely tight restrictions on the amount of aid distributed per family, invasive vetting processes (including use of facial recognition technology), and reliance on private military contractors at distribution sites in areas controlled by the Israeli military (in breach of international law). In addition, violence has marred GHF food distribution: At least 224 people have been killed and 1,800 injured in and around the aid sites. Amid the growing controversy, the Boston Consulting Group, which helped establish the GHF’s aid distribution mechanism in Gaza, terminated its contract with the GHF and fired two of the firm’s partners for not disclosing details about the project.
Additional international concerns have focused on the fact that the GHF seeks to use the location of its sites to force Gazans to move south to receive humanitarian aid. Critics argue that this population relocation would help facilitate the stated goal of Israel’s most far-right politicians to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Smotrich, who had previously opposed allowing even a trickle of aid into Gaza, has publicly supported the GHF, in coordination with Israel’s Gideon’s Chariots military operation, as a step toward implementing the Trump plan.
Within Israel, attention has focused on who is paying for the new Gaza aid operation. The GHF reportedly employs an estimated 300 private contractors at the GHF hubs, with operation costs running over $140 million a month. The GHF claims to have received over $100 million in commitments from an undisclosed foreign government donor. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has accused the Netanyahu government of secretly funding the project through two foreign shell companies—an assertion the prime minister’s office denied.
Global Responses
On May 16, as he prepared to depart for the Middle East, Trump told reporters that he didn’t want to see starvation in Gaza. Two days later, Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff told the press that the administration did not want to see a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Yet Trump made virtually no public statements about Gaza during his Gulf trip—and neither did his hosts.
Ongoing negotiations between the United States, Israel, and Hamas over a new ceasefire plan and release of Israeli hostages have gone nowhere. Instead, Trump has focused on Middle East issues where he can take unilateral action that doesn’t involve putting direct pressure on Netanyahu, including cutting his own deals with the Houthis, an agreement with Hamas to secure the release of U.S.-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, the lifting of sanctions on Syria, and bilateral discussions with Iran.
In recent weeks, other governments have begun to fill the vacuum, becoming increasingly outspoken in their criticism of the evolving humanitarian catastrophe. A number of individual states, along with the EU, have signaled a willingness to reassess their trade relationships with Israel. Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway recently announced joint sanctions against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich for repeatedly “inciting violence against Palestinians.” Global South governments—following South Africa’s lead at the International Court of Justice—have pushed for UN measures on Israel and formed the Hague Group to coordinate actions on Gaza and uphold international law, aiming for actions such as military embargoes and sanctions.
Yet despite the public statements, high-level meetings, and growing grassroots anger at the deteriorating humanitarian situation, few concrete measures have been implemented in response to the Netanyahu government’s policies and the ongoing humanitarian crisis. On June 4, the United States stood alone when it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent Gaza ceasefire, as well as lifting of all restrictions on humanitarian aid delivery. Another opportunity to take joint action may come at the June 17 high-level UN Conference on the Two-State Solution, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
What Comes Next?
Following the brutal October 7 Hamas attack, members of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition saw an opportunity to achieve their oft-stated goals of ending the Palestinian presence in Gaza—and opening the gates for Israeli settlement there. In May, ten weeks after Netanyahu implemented the siege and eight weeks into Israel’s new military campaign, Netanyahu reassured lawmakers in a closed-door session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that their goal was on track: Israel was destroying more and more houses in Gaza, and Palestinians would have nowhere to return to, making emigration the “only obvious result.”
The GHF may become a part of this plan. It is not “humanitarian” in any respect of the term. The quantity and availability of food provided since the GHF began its operations is grossly inadequate to the enormous need.
The international community and Arab states must act urgently and decisively. They must use all necessary means to secure the immediate opening of Gaza’s crossing points—including Rafah and Kerem Shalom—to the entry of 700 or more aid convoys a day from the United Nations and international humanitarian organizations to prevent further human suffering and put an end to the current mass tragedy unfolding in Gaza.
