U.S.-backed Gaza aid group to disband

The company says it fulfilled its mission, but Palestinians say it endangered lives.

- By JULIA FRANKEL AND NaTALIE MELZER

THE GAZA Humanitarian Foundation says it handed out 187 million meals.

(Ohad Zwigenberg Associated Press)

JERUSALEM — The U.S. and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, set up to distribute aid to the Gaza Strip as an alternative to the United Nations but which Palestinians said endangered the lives of civilians as they tried to get food, said Monday it would shut down operations.

The company had already closed distribution sites after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect six weeks ago in Gaza. It announced Monday that it was permanently shutting down, claiming it had fulfilled its mission. “We have succeeded in our mission of showing there's a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” its director, John Acree, said in a statement.

Also Monday, Israel's defense minister clashed publicly with the military's chief of staff over the army’s latest investigations of its failures in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militants that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

The operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were shrouded in secrecy during its short time in operation. The group never revealed its sources of funding and said little about the armed contractors who operated the sites.

It said its goal was to deliver aid to Gaza without it being diverted by Hamas.

Palestinians, aid workers and health officials have said the system forced aid seekers to risk their lives to reach the sites by passing Israeli troops who secured the locations. Soldiers often opened fire, killing hundreds, according to witnesses and videos posted to social media. The Israeli military says it fired only warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.