Israel outlines plan to control all aid entering Gaza

Israel has said it will take direct control of all humanitarian aid entering and distributed inside Gaza in a plan that many international aid agencies say they are unlikely to cooperate with as outlined, according to agencies briefed on the plan by Israeli authorities last week.

Under the initiative, only one entry point from Israel into the enclave – Kerem Shalom in southeastern Gaza – would remain open. All goods entering Gaza would be screened and directed toward several new “logistics hubs” established by Israel, potentially with security provided by private contractors, officials from five major aid organizations and the United Nations said.

Israel would also institute a tracking system for all aid distribution and potentially insist that all aid employees are vetted to its satisfaction, according to the agency officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The new rules were described by COGAT, the Israel Defense Ministry unit that coordinates civil affairs in the occupied territories, in meetings with the agencies Feb. 26 and 27.

The signaled changes come at a time of profound uncertainty for the future of humanitarian aid in Gaza. Several major international humanitarian organizations were informed Friday that funding they expected to receive for Gaza from the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development would be cut because of a stop-work order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

While some of those stoppages now have reportedly been reversed by the State Department, and the Supreme Court has ordered that payments be resumed for work already done, it is not clear what funds, if any, have started to move again.

Meanwhile, Israel on Sunday halted all aid shipments into Gaza, repeating without evidence its long-standing charges – denied by aid agencies – that the assistance is being diverted to Hamas. That decision stopped the increased flow of assistance that began in January as a six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took hold.

The current ceasefire now appears close to collapse. Israel and Hamas have not agreed on a way forward following the official end Saturday of the temporary truce, the first phase of what President Donald Trump called an “epic” deal to end the war that he claimed credit for achieving. In addition to increased aid, the deal brought the release of 33 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Although fighting has not resumed, Israel has refused to meaningfully engage in negotiations over a second phase, and no substantive talks are known to have taken place.

Under the agreement, phase two is intended to bring the release of about two dozen remaining Israeli hostages still alive and some three dozen bodies in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff will return to the region “in the coming days,” the State Department said Monday, to push for extension of the first phase until the end of the Ramadan-Passover holidays, a period of about 50 days. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to what he calls the “Witkoff plan,” which would begin with the release of half the remaining hostages while negotiations resume.

Hamas has rejected that plan, saying that Israel is stalling for time and hostage releases without agreeing that the end state of negotiations must be the Israel Defense Forces’ withdrawal from Gaza.

In a social media post Wednesday, Trump renewed his threat that there would be “hell to pay” for Hamas if it did not “release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered.”

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say.” Otherwise, Trump said, “it is OVER for you. … You are DEAD!”

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem responded that “these threats complicate the ceasefire agreement and encourage the occupation government to avoid implementing it.” Noting that the United States was one of the mediators that negotiated the signed agreement, Qasem, in an interview with The Washington Post, called on the Trump administration to “pressure the occupation to proceed with the second stage as stipulated.”

U.S. special hostage envoy Adam Boehler met recently with a Hamas representative in Doha, Qatar, to discuss hostage releases, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier Wednesday, saying that Boehler has “the authority to talk to anyone” and that talks were “ongoing.” Israel, she said, had been consulted.

The meeting broke with U.S. practice of not communicating directly with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, but did not result in any breakthroughs, people familiar with the talks said.

The White House did not respond to requests for confirmation of Witkoff’s ceasefire-extension proposal, or for comment on Israel’s aid distribution initiative.

“Israel has negotiated in good faith since the beginning of this administration to ensure the release of hostages held captive by Hamas terrorists,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in an emailed statement. “We will support their decision on next steps given Hamas has indicated it’s no longer interested in a negotiated ceasefire.”

In a video statement released over the weekend, Netanyahu praised Trump as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” He cited what he called the president’s “visionary plan for Gaza” – relocating its Palestinian population and turning ownership over to the United States for development of what Trump has called a “Riviera of the Mediterranean.”

All 22 members of the Arab League rejected Trump’s plan at an emergency summit in Egypt on Tuesday and agreed on an alternative proposal to rebuild Gaza in stages while keeping Palestinians in the territory.

Netanyahu also thanked Trump for sending Israel “all the munitions that were being held up” by the Biden administration because of human rights concerns. The Biden administration authorized billions of dollars in arms transfers and military aid to Israel over the course of the war – some for delivery over a period of years – but refused to send one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns about civilian casualties. Trump has since authorized that shipment.

In a statement Saturday, Rubio said that “since taking office, the Trump Administration has approved nearly $12 billion” in major arms sales to Israel.

More than 48,000 Gazans have died as a result of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, primarily from unrelenting Israeli air and ground attacks that have destroyed much of the enclave.

Even before the war, Gaza was heavily dependent on foreign humanitarian assistance, although Israel tightly controlled what goods entered and left the enclave. When the current conflict began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel in October 2023, Israel immediately closed all entry and exit points for humanitarian aid.

Under pressure from the Biden administration, it allowed some assistance to enter at levels that left Gazans without adequate food, water, medical care or sanitation. A significant increase in humanitarian assistance was a key part of the ceasefire deal.

In addition to stopping the flow of aid, Israel is “not ruling out the possibility of cutting off water and electricity in Gaza,” Netanyahu spokesman Omer Dostri said this week. Even as it remains eager to free the hostages, the IDF is preparing for a return to fighting until it believes the last remnants of Hamas are wiped out, according to a person familiar with Israeli planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“It’s really up to Israeli authorities to define who Hamas is,” an aid worker said. “That’s the issue from our side: They have typically been seeing anyone who has been affiliated with the Ministry of Health as Hamas, any of the doctors and nurses. … If you don’t follow an evacuation order, you’re Hamas. Depending on who is interpreting that, that could literally mean every single person inside Gaza.”

The new COGAT plan for aid distribution, first reported by the Guardian, was outlined in separate briefings for the United Nations and international aid agencies.

Officials from several agencies said aspects of the plan were presented in vague terms, leaving questions about the role of the IDF and private contractors.

“I’m just guessing they would be at the hubs, but that’s not necessarily clear,” a U.N. official said of the Israeli military and outside contractors. “The idea here is that they eliminate Hamas and any potential influence by Hamas or anyone they think is affiliated with Hamas at any stage in the process.”

“There was a lot in the presentation about vetting, but it’s never clear what they’re talking about,” the U.N. official said.

Since the ceasefire began, two U.S. private security firms, along with an Egyptian company, have been operating a vehicle checkpoint inside Gaza, checking for weapons being transported from the south – where hundreds of thousands fled from Israeli airstrikes – by people returning to their homes in the north. The U.N. official said that there had been “no issues whatsoever” with the contractors and that the system had “actually been working very well.”

It was also unclear if the aid initiative outlined by COGAT was to be implemented only if there is no negotiated agreement to extend the phase-one ceasefire. COGAT did not respond to requests for clarification of that or of specific aspects of the plan.

Under the plan described by aid agency officials, they would have to shutter the approximately 60 warehouses that they currently operate to distribute food, medical supplies and other lifesaving assistance to Gazans. The COGAT plan would see aid screened at Kerem Shalom, then transported to the Israeli-established logistics hubs, from which it would be distributed to Israeli-approved locations.

Supplies would “not be allowed to be distributed to any location without COGAT approval, and we would not be permitted to hold warehousing capacity or to distribute to unvetted partners,” one aid official said in an email. “All of our international and national staff, and potentially our clients, would also need to be vetted, which is something we currently refuse (especially for Palestinians) as this could pose risks to their safety and privacy.”

Scott Paul, director of peace and security for Oxfam America, said the proposed arrangement would “put much, much tighter restrictions on the flow of systems, who can deliver it, how it can be delivered, how quickly it can be delivered, and where it ultimately can be delivered to – all of which are conditions that anywhere else and in Gaza, we simply wouldn’t accept.”

Aid officials, whose own rules mandate that distribution of humanitarian assistance is based on the needs of noncombatant civilians rather than the priorities of belligerents, are concerned that the hubs could provide fodder for “weaponizing aid within Gaza” if Israel were to track aid recipients from those hubs and map out where people live, one official said.

“The bigger issue is … how aid is distributed and how do we make sure that people are not intimidated by that aid, that the Israelis are not using it as an information-gathering or an intelligence-gathering technique,” the aid official said, “and how do we really protect and preserve both our staff as well as our partners from basically one belligerent party that exercises power.”

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Parker reported from Cairo.