By Sally Ibrahim

 

ISRAELI OCCUPIED AND STARVED GAZA, 13 Oct. - (ANA) - Israel has dismantled the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites just days after the ceasefire, ending what Palestinians saw as a militarised aid project.

 

In a move that has reignited debate over Washington’s role in Gaza, the Israeli army has dismantled at least one of the four US-Israeli-operated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites just days after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect.

 

The centres, established last May and fully funded by the US Treasury, were presented as “humanitarian hubs” to deliver food and medicine to civilians.

 

In reality, they became symbols of how aid was politicised and militarised during the war. Palestinians and aid workers accused Israel and the US of using the GHF to impose control over food distribution, bypass UN agencies, and engineer famine conditions that forced civilians to relocate southward.

 

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 2,615 Palestinians were killed and more than 18,000 injured in or around the GHF distribution sites since their establishment last May, due to shootings, stampedes, and explosions during aid operations, which were turned chaotic.

 

Many people, including children, have also gone missing when seeking aid - presumably abducted by Israeli forces.

 

On Sunday, residents and security sources told The New Arab that Israeli military teams had begun dismantling the heavily guarded compounds across Gaza.

 

For many Palestinians, their removal ends what they saw as a "military project disguised as aid" that deepened suffering and stripped relief of its neutrality.

 

 

 

 

From the outset, the GHF was met with suspicion. It operated outside the UN system, sidelining UNRWA, the agency long responsible for Palestinian refugees, and placing aid delivery under Israeli coordination. Many said it sought to reshape Gaza's humanitarian landscape under occupation rather than address starvation.

 

"The centres looked more like security bases than food distribution points […] There were wires, floodlights, armed guards and Israeli soldiers controlled every entry and exit. People went there to survive, but many never came back," said Mahmoud Rajab, a displaced father from Khan Younis who lived near one of the dismantled sites, told TNA.

 

Rajab lost two of his children during a stampede at one of the centres in August. On Sunday morning, he awoke to find the site cleared overnight.

 

"It was as if it had never existed. They removed the fences, the soldiers, the lights and everything. The fear is gone, but so is the food," Rajab said.

 

For months, local residents and aid workers have accused the American centres of operating under strict Israeli control. Civilians described scenes of chaos and bloodshed as soldiers oversaw distributions that frequently turned deadly.

 

"This place was closed to us unless the soldiers said otherwise," Abdul Ashqar, a resident of al-Nuseirat refugee camp, told TNA.

 

"We used to walk kilometres in the dark just to reach the gates, carrying our children or pushing carts, hoping to get a bag of flour or a bottle of oil. Sometimes we waited for hours under the sun, and sometimes under fire. People were desperate, but it always felt like we were being punished for being hungry," he said.

 

"Now it's gone, the guards, the fences, the fear. But we still don't know if we'll be safer without it. Maybe the danger will just come in another form, hunger, sickness, or another kind of control. In Gaza, nothing ever really ends; it just," he added.

 

Neither Israel nor the United States has commented on the dismantling.

 

Israeli Army Radio reported briefly that the centres had been "terminated without formal announcement", adding that future humanitarian operations might be redirected through "international mechanisms".

 

 

 

 

The dismantling comes at a politically sensitive moment. The US-brokered ceasefire, supported by Egypt and Qatar, ended nearly two years of war that left most of Gaza in ruins.

 

Yet the removal of the GHF sites has been interpreted not as a logistical adjustment but as the quiet collapse of a policy that sought to control the population through deprivation.

 

Gaza-based political analyst Mustafa Ibrahim told TNA the move "signals the end of an American attempt to play a direct humanitarian role in Gaza, bypassing both the UN and local authorities".

 

"These centres were part of an undeclared project to reshape Gaza’s relationship with the international community. It was a political tool under military control, not a humanitarian one. The experiment failed because it tried to separate aid from dignity," he said.

 

He added that Israel's move could pave the way for the return of UN agencies, including UNRWA, and for a restructured international relief system "less tied to military supervision".   - (ANA) -

 

 

AB/ANA/13 October 2025  - - -