Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: US-Funded Aid Scheme Where Hundreds Were Killed Seeking Food (May–November 2025)

What Happened

In May 2025, with Gaza in the grip of famine under an Israeli blockade, the US and Israel backed a new mechanism to distribute food that bypassed the UN-led humanitarian system. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-registered foundation, began operating on 26 May 2025. It ran four distribution sites, all "within militarized areas": three in Rafah and one in the Israeli security zone known as the Netzarim Corridor. Two US private contractors, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, ran the system "in coordination with the Israeli military". Instead of food being delivered at hundreds of accessible points, the mechanism "requires Palestinians to trek across dangerous and destroyed terrain" (HRW).

Shootings began within the first week. On 1 June 2025 Israeli tanks opened fire on crowds at a Rafah distribution site, killing at least 31 people according to Gaza's Government Media Office, and one more person was killed near Gaza City; more than 200 were injured. Nine people had already been killed in two earlier shootings. The Israeli military said, citing an initial inquiry, that its forces did not fire at civilians near or within the site. A witness, Ibrahim Abu Saoud, told the Associated Press that Israeli forces opened fire on people as they moved towards the distribution point (Al Jazeera).

By 31 July 2025 the UN human rights office had recorded at least 1,373 Palestinians killed while trying to get food since 27 May: 859 in the vicinity of GHF sites and 514 along the routes of aid convoys. It found that "most of the killings were committed by the Israeli military". It noted other armed elements were present but said it had no evidence of their involvement (UN News).

The US role

The administration publicly backed GHF. On 26 June 2025, a month after the killings at the sites began, the US announced a $30 million allocation to GHF. HRW says the administration sent it "by circumventing congressional approvals". The State Department called GHF's work "absolutely incredible" (CBS News).

In August 2025 a US logistics contractor told CBS News that American security personnel hired through subcontractors were firing at people at the sites: "It took me two or three days to realize that they were actually shooting at people, they weren't shooting at combatants." He described the gunfire as "indiscriminate". GHF called the allegations "utterly baseless".

In August 2025, 28 UN experts called for the scheme to be dismantled, saying Israeli forces and foreign contractors "continue to open indiscriminate fire on people seeking aid". GHF announced on 24 November 2025 that it was winding down, after the October ceasefire (Al Jazeera).

Legal Analysis

This entry concerns the US contribution, so the analysis has two parts: the principal crimes, and US complicity in them.

The principal crimes

Armed conflict. The hostilities in Gaza are an armed conflict, and Israel is the occupying power. Palestine is an ICC State Party, so the Court has jurisdiction over crimes on its territory.

Attacks on civilians (Art. 8(2)(b)(i)). People queuing for food are civilians. HRW documented near-daily shootings at the four sites and concluded the killings are war crimes. The UN human rights office recorded the deaths and attributed most to the Israeli military, and stated that intentionally directing attacks against civilians is a war crime. On these sources the principal crime is well documented. It has not been adjudicated.

Starvation as a method of warfare (Art. 8(2)(b)(xxv)). HRW and the UN office both point to the wilful impeding of relief supplies. HRW contrasts GHF's four sites and roughly 60 trucks a day with the UN-led system's 600 trucks a day during the early-2025 ceasefire.

US complicity

The Rome Statute offers two routes. Article 25(3)(c) requires aiding or abetting for the purpose of facilitating the crime. Article 25(3)(d) requires an intentional contribution to a crime committed by a group acting with a common purpose, made with knowledge of the group's intention.

• Contribution. The US funded GHF ($30 million) and lent it political backing. This was a contribution to the distribution scheme within which the killings occurred, not to the weapons or forces that did the shooting. Whether funding the scheme was a "significant" contribution to the killings themselves is the central question, and it is contested.
• Knowledge. The US allocated the money on 26 June 2025, after a month of mass-casualty shootings at the sites had been widely reported. Continuing support with that knowledge is the strongest point for complicity.
• Purpose. There is no evidence that the US funded GHF for the purpose of facilitating killings. Article 25(3)(c) is not met.

Strongest defence argument. The US would say it funded food aid, not violence; that GHF fed people the UN system was failing to reach; that the shootings were Israel's acts and Israel's responsibility; and that withdrawing funding would have left people hungrier. That argument largely answers Article 25(3)(c). It is weaker against Article 25(3)(d) and against the US duty under Common Article 1 to ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions, because the US kept supporting a model that, as it knew, channelled starving people into military zones where they were being shot.

The broader US military supply to Israel during the Gaza war is analysed separately in the arms complicity entry.

Why This Grade

This entry is graded critical with a classification of potential for complicity.

• The principal crimes are well documented by the UN human rights office's figures and HRW's legal analysis.
• The US contribution is documented: funding, bypassing of congressional review, and public endorsement after the killings were known. That supports a reasonable basis to suspect complicity under Article 25(3)(d), the "potential" threshold.
• The top grade requires the assistance to be shown as substantial and knowing at reasonable grounds. Funding a food-distribution scheme is less direct than supplying the forces that shot people, and no court or UN inquiry has found the US complicit in the GHF killings. It is therefore not graded extreme.
• It is graded critical because the US actively underwrote a scheme that undermined the protections international humanitarian law gives to civilians and to humanitarian relief, after its lethal consequences were known.

Confidence in this grade: medium.