Huckabee said the aid mechanism, which will be administered by a newly formed private foundation stood up by the US, will aim to distribute food in a way that “Hamas is not able to get their hands on it.”
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of stealing and profiting off aid shipments to Gaza, but humanitarian aid organizations say the overwhelming majority of food aid reaches civilians in need.
Under the US-Israeli plan, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as it’s called, would set up distribution sites that would be secured by private US military contractors and manned by aid workers. The Israeli military would “be involved in providing necessary military security” outside the immediate area of the distribution sites, Huckabee said, speaking at the US embassy in Jerusalem.
The foundation will initially establish four distribution sites which will aim to provide “pre-packaged rations, hygiene kits, and medical supplies” to a total of 1.2 million Palestinians, or about 60 percent of Gaza’s population, according to a foundation document obtained by CNN.
Pressed by CNN what the remaining 40 percent of Gaza’s population is expected to do, Huckabee said the mechanism will be “scaled up” over time.
“You have to start somewhere and the somewhere feeds an enormous level of the people of Gaza,” Huckabee said, before repeatedly blaming Hamas for rising hunger in Gaza. Aid groups have repeatedly attributed hunger in Gaza to Israel’s total blockade of humanitarian relief.
The planning has been going on for months but kicked into high gear in the last few weeks, said a source familiar with the matter, cautioning that there is still “a significant amount of planning and resourcing to be done.”
“The genuine intention is to develop a secure way to deliver aid that does not enable Hamas or (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) to get their hands on the aid before it reaches the point of need. In the hands of individual Palestinian families in Gaza,” the source added, saying both the US and Israel have no confidence in the United Nations-based system that has been used in the past.
There appear to have been some attempts to sway parties reluctant to join the mechanism. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff held an “informal briefing” with UN Security Council members on Wednesday, where Gaza was discussed, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Hamas said the new proposal was part of “Israeli plans for displacement and subjugation through a policy of starvation.”
In a statement released Friday afternoon, Hamas called on the international community “to take urgent action to prevent the militarization of aid and its transformation into a tool for managing starvation and a blatant violation of humanitarian standards.”
The United Nations and other primary aid groups in Gaza have rejected the US-Israeli plan, which they say would facilitate the forced displacement of Palestinians and fail to meet the needs of the population.
“This mechanism appears practically unfeasible, incompatible with humanitarian principles and will create serious insecurity risks, all while failing to meet Israel’s obligations under international law,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote this week in a document obtained by CNN.
The UN also criticized the plan for a critically low number of distribution sites instead of the roughly 400 that operated in Gaza before Israel’s total blockade. With only a handful of sites under the plan the Trump administration is pushing, displaced Palestinians could be forced to walk long distances carrying heavy packages of rations for large families.
UN agencies have instead called on Israel to lift its nearly 10-week siege on Gaza and allow aid to flow in freely, which Israel has rejected.
The main UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Friday that “basic humanitarian supplies, including food, fuel, medical aid and vaccines for children, are rapidly running out; UNRWA flour and food parcels have run out and over one third of essential medical supplies are already out of stock.”
“This is having a devastating impact on the population, particularly on vulnerable groups including children, women and the elderly,” UNRWA said.
Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the organization representing Palestinian aid groups working in Gaza, told CNN it had received no information about the proposal and said the organizations involved in the US plan would “not consider the basic humanitarian principle of our people.”
Huckabee acknowledged the deteriorating situation in Gaza, saying: “The greatest danger, the most important danger, people starving to death.”
“If there wasn’t a humanitarian crisis, there wouldn’t be an effort to try to deal with it. So the answer is, obviously yes, there is a humanitarian crisis,” Huckabee told CNN.
Huckabee said “several partners” have agreed to participate in the new mechanism, but he declined to name them “because some of the details of their participation are being worked out.” He repeatedly said the plan is not yet finalized and said the initial implementation “will not be perfect, especially in the early days.”
Israeli officials continue to deny the extent of the crisis created by the military’s blockade that began on March 2.
On Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Heskel told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that “the situation in Gaza is very far from what the reports are actually saying” and called reports of starvation “complete lies.”
It will likely take at least two more weeks before the new mechanism can start bringing aid into Gaza, a source familiar with the plans said. And it will take several more weeks before the program can be scaled up to serve a larger share of Gaza’s population.
But the very launch of the mechanism is still in question amid opposition from the major humanitarian aid players.
“Everyone who’s been saying there’s a crisis, I expect them to step up and to now join the effort to resolve it,” Huckabee said.
Some humanitarian aid players have signed up, according to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation document obtained by CNN. The former CEO of disaster response organization Team Rubicon is expected to serve as executive director; and the former chief executive of World Central Kitchen Nate Mook is expected to serve on the board of directors.
But in a sign of how many aspects of the plan are still being finalized, the former executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme, David Beasely is only one tentatively listed as joining the foundation’s advisory board, with “to be finalized” appended to his name.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting.
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