Julian Borger & Bethan McKernan
The Guardian / October 22, 2024
Discussion about letting private firms bid for contracts comes before Knesset vote on banning UN relief agency from operating in Israel.
Israel is weighing the use of private security contractors – possibly involving UK special forces veterans – to deliver aid to Gaza, as conditions in the north of the strip worsen dramatically, The Guardian has learned.
According to an Israeli official, the security cabinet discussed the issue on Sunday, before an expected vote in the Knesset next week on two bills that would ban the UN relief agency, UNRWA, from operating in Israel. If passed, the bills would severely curtail the operations of by far the biggest aid operation in Gaza.
After more than a year of bombardment, all form of law and order has collapsed in Gaza, where the population is desperate and armed gangs run much of what is left of its urban areas.
Security threats are a major obstacle to aid deliveries, including the threat of attack by Israeli forces. Aid agencies have resisted being part of militarised convoys, state or privately run, for fear of being targeted as being party to the conflict.
“There’s a reason that humanitarians don’t operate this way,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration, now president of Refugees International. “The US, during the peak ‘war on terror’ era, occasionally experimented with military contractors and this kind of militarised aid delivery, and it was always a disaster.”
Konyndyk added: “US-funded contractors that took an armed security approach got hit a lot because they were seen as combatants.”
Mordechai “Moti” Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman whose firm, Global Delivery Company (GDC), is bidding for the Gaza aid delivery contract, said the Israeli cabinet did not formally make a decision on Sunday on the grounds that it was up to the defence ministry and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“Aid mechanisms” had been discussed by the cabinet on Sunday but no final decision had been made, according to an official who was briefed on the meeting. COGAT, the arm of the IDF that operates in occupied Palestinian territories, referred questions to the Israeli defence ministry, which did not reply to a request for comment on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the US Agency for International Development said: “USAid has not been in contact with and is not funding GDC. We have not discussed any such plan with the GoI [Israeli government].”
The USAid spokesperson referred to “trusted and experienced UN and NGO partners” and added: “Any type of security or political arrangement must ensure sustained access for humanitarians and freedom of movement for civilians, including voluntary, safe, and dignified returns or resettlement.”
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Tuesday that the IDF had chosen Kahana’s firm for handling aid delivery into Gaza, but Kahana said he had not received confirmation.
He said that if GDC was given the contract, the actual aid deliveries into Gaza would be carried out by a British security firm now working in Iraq, which he said he could not name until the agreement was finalised.
“These are British special forces,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”
He said the UK implementing partner would need 30 days to deploy once given a green light.
Discussions over aid deliveries come against a backdrop of increasingly desperate conditions, particularly in northern Gaza, after nearly three weeks of intense IDF bombardment, in what Israel describes as mopping up operations against Hamas but which critics suspect is an effort to drive out the Palestinian population entirely and settle the territory with Israelis.
“Our staff report they cannot find food, water or medical care,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, said in a social media post. “The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied. In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die.”
The UN reported on Monday that “during the first 20 days of October, only four out of 66 planned humanitarian missions through the Israeli checkpoint from southern to northern Gaza were facilitated by Israeli authorities”.
The Biden administration has lobbied the Knesset not to pass the bills banning UNRWA. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and according to his spokesperson, Matthew Miller, “emphasised the need for Israel to take additional steps to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza”.
Kahana is a celebrated figure in Israel. He made his fortune in the rental car industry in the US and organised an aid mission for refugees from the Syrian civil war and the rescue of residual Jewish communities trapped in the Syrian and Afghanistan conflicts. He has a farm in New Jersey but spoke to the Guardian from what he said was a vineyard he owns in France.
Kahana alleged that aid deliveries into Gaza were being looted and the supplies were falling into the hands of Hamas. A proposal for aid deliveries put forward by GDC in May, seen by the Guardian, envisages a pilot scheme in which supplies would be taken across the Erez crossing point to a protected storage facility in Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza, and driven from there to nearby distribution points.
Distribution would be carried out by lightly armed teams in small armoured trucks. They would have riot control gear for use in controlling crowds, including plastic bullets and water cannon. But there would be a standby quick reaction force a kilometre or less away, which would intervene with heavier weapons if the distribution teams came under attack.
Kahana said that the IDF was not equipped or trained for such aid deliveries, and pointed to the “flour massacre” on 29 February in Gaza City, in which IDF troops opened fire on a crowd of Palestinian civilians converging on an aid delivery, killing 118 Palestinians and wounding 760.
“There’s no need for 18-, 19-year-olds to give lollipops to kids and have 100 kids jump on them,” Kahana said. “If you have a soldier there, he’s going to freak out and start shooting and people die.”
Ultimately, the GDC plan envisages that the distribution areas would expand into “gated communities” under armed guard, a safe place for aid to be distributed.
“It’s the same as a Miami gated community, but without the pool, tennis court and golf course or whatever,” Kahana said. “The idea is that it’s gated, it’s safe. We just provide the security and people run their own lives, and take humanitarian supplies into their communities.”
Israeli officials have repeatedly dismissed US-backed plans to bring the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority back to govern Gaza. Early in the war, Israel approached Arab states such as Egypt and the UAE to discuss forming a security force that could operate in Gaza “the day after”, but the idea was met with a tepid response, regional diplomats said.
In January, the IDF trialled “humanitarian bubbles” run by local people with no ties to Hamas, such as respected community elders, in three areas of north Gaza. These vetted figures were supposed to administer the distribution of aid funnelled by the Israeli army from the western Erez crossing. If successful, their responsibilities would be expanded to include areas of civilian governance and service provision such as bakeries, and use of the “bubbles” would be extended southwards.
The pilots never got off the ground, however. Palestinian and Israeli analysts said the “bubbles” plan was a resounding failure that ended in Hamas killing several Palestinians tasked with distributing aid.
It appears Israeli officials have since realised that Palestinians from Gaza are unable and unwilling to carry out the plan.
Julian Borger is The Guardian’s senior international correspondent based in London
Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for The Guardian
