US soldiers are invading Gaza under the guise of delivering aid. We won’t fall for it.

Nuvpreet Kalra

Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

US veterans-turned-mercenaries with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation landed at ‘Ben Gurion’ Airport over the weekend. They are weaponizing humanitarian aid to enforce Israel’s plans for ethnic cleansing, checkpoints, and occupation.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), also described as “the American humanitarian plan" by the Zionist minister Gideon Sa'ar, has been tasked with carrying out Israel’s plan for aid distribution. Tasked by whom? The US and Israel themselves. This entire ‘aid’ apparatus has been described as Israel-initiated and US-supported. This speaks to the broader Zionist project, of course, and thus ought to be the lens through which this new aid organization should be viewed. The GHF is made up of US military veterans who intend to patrol Gaza and set up “aid hubs” only operating in southern and central Gaza, working squarely with Israel’s plans to ethnically cleanse the north of Gaza.

Aid would be distributed through “aid hubs”, which would crop up in the south of Gaza, patrolled and administered by US soldiers with Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) soldiers nearby. Palestinians would be able to access aid just once or twice a month. They claim this is budgeted at $1.30 per package for the entire cost of the aid and the distribution. The occupation claims it will use facial recognition technology to screen people they deem worthy of getting the aid. This is absolutely horrifying, more so when the most prolific facial recognition apparatus Israel has is Blue Wolf, a database system of screening Palestinians in the occupied West Bank the IOF use to determine whether to abduct, injure, or let people through at checkpoints,

The question at the root of the US sending military veterans to Gaza should be - why? Why is the United States, the main funder and architect of Israel’s genocide, setting up aid distribution for Palestinians in Gaza? If they wanted to help Palestinians, they would stop the billions in weapons to Israel, not send military veterans to occupied Palestine.

It seems nonsensical because it's a nefarious plan to occupy Gaza.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s executive director is Jake Woods, a former US sniper who was part of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also one of the 3,000 US troops that went to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to occupy the island under the guise of humanitarian assistance. Woods has the perfect track record to be leading such an effort to Gaza, he’s been well-trained as a footsoldier of the American empire, so why would this be any different?

The plan is laid out bare, if not by the United States. Since this plan has been set in motion, though US mercenaries have been in Gaza for months, the leaders of the zionist entity have been more proudly announcing their genocidal plans. Netanyahu victoriously announced that “we're going to take control of all the Gaza Strip”, while ‘Finance Minister’ Smotrich declared “we are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip. We will stop being afraid of the word occupation.”

Getting the UN out of the way

This has been months in the making. One of the main hurdles was getting the United Nations out of the way in order to justify needing to set up an aid distribution apparatus. We saw this successfully enacted with the US attacks on UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) who have distributed aid in Palestine for decades. In January 2024, like clockwork, the European Union, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Britain, and Japan cut their funding to UNRWA after the US and Israel claimed its staff were involved in the October 7th operation. Nine months later, the Israeli occupation banned UNRWA from operating in the land it occupies, making it incredibly difficult for the UN Agency to work in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. All the while, the IOF has targeted attacks on UNRWA workers, killing at least 300 staff in the past 18 months.

With the UNRWA obstacle dealt with, the next step was creating a situation where the US aid machine would fulfil a gap. Trucks packed full of aid have been lining up out of the bounds of Gaza for months. Israel’s total blockade, which has been enforced since March 2nd and received total support from the US, has provided the necessary humanitarian crisis in Gaza for the US to come as savior.

Israel has manufactured a famine; the US gets to use it as a trojan horse to occupy Gaza. There are still miles of trucks of aid waiting at the border ready to be delivered. There are apparatuses in Gaza that have been operating for decades. If the United States actually cared about getting aid into Gaza, then it would force Israel to lift the blockade and let UNRWA operate. The fact it isn’t, while continuing a seamless supply of weapons to Israel, tells us all we need to know. Once again, the US is using its tattered playbook of imperialist venture under the guise of humanitarian assistance.

With clarity, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator has described this whole plan as a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement". Last week, Hamas released US-IOF soldier Edan Alexander in exchange for Israel lifting the blockade and allowing aid into Gaza, as well as for Trump calling for a ceasefire. None of this happened. The US misled the resistance groups, and now we know why.

Blackwater, blueprint

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation plans to operate aid distribution with two other US private companies, UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions. Nearly 100 mercenaries with UG Solutions were pictured in Gaza earlier this year, heavily armed and operating checkpoints to split the north and south of Gaza. Little has been seen of where these ex-US military soldiers are up to today, but with the US plan, they will “secure” their role as mercenaries occupying Gaza. If we have learnt anything from US mercenaries in occupied places, this is deeply worrisome.

Safe Reach Solutions, the other private company part of the GHF aid system, is headed by Philip F. Reilly, who planned the checkpoints at the ‘Netzarim corridor’ where UG Solutions’ mercenaries were stationed. Reilly is a former CIA paramilitary chief who also worked for Blackwater. Blackwater is a private mercenary company, most well known for its Pentagon contract to send US mercenaries to both Afghanistan and Iraq shortly after the U.S. invasions, where its mercenaries committed massacres and systematic killings of civilians. To this day, they have not been brought to justice and Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, continues his murky meddling, most recently in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Haiti.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is yet another vessel for the US to exercise its imperialist violence. As Israel escalates its genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza with American-made and American-supplied weapons, we must be very clear that this is US-Israeli genocide. The US can distance itself from Israel when useful, and other times work symbiotically. This is US imperialism operating as planned. This aid plan is a critical moment for us to recognize that through describing this as a US effort, then it provides a distance from occupation and veil of legitimacy. Of course, this is to conceal that the aim of this escalation in the genocide for the past 18 months is the total occupation of Gaza. So far, they have failed to do so. Now we are witnessing a new deeply disturbing tactic of US-Israeli genocide. This cannot succeed.

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Nuvpreet Kalra is CODEPINK's Digital Content Produce & Bases Off Cyprus Campaign Coordinator

Nuvpreet is based in London, England. She completed a Bachelor’s in Politics & Sociology at the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Internet Equalities at the University of the Arts London. Her studies focused on racialised surveillance capitalism, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence as a weapon of war and settler colonialism. Nuvpreet joined CODEPINK as an intern in 2023, and now produces digital content, co-ordinates the Bases Off Cyprus campaign, and organises against imperialism in Britain.