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Gaza Is Starving, but Aid From Israel and the U.S. Won't Arrive Anytime Soon: 'Not in a Week, Not in a Month'
- Hagai Amit, Haaretz
- May 21
- 5 min read
This week, Netanyahu announced plans to allow humanitarian aid back into Gaza, but fulfilling the demands will take time. 'Nobody will be able to provide the quantities,' says one importer about the requirements set by the American private security company Safe Reach Solutions.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement this week about allowing humanitarian aid back into Gaza has Israeli suppliers doubting the plan to get it done.
"The entire industry has been talking about this and figuring out price quotes so they can compete in the bidding process, but nobody will be able to do it or provide the required quantities," one importer says.
The requirements announced by the American private security company Safe Reach Solutions, obtained by TheMarker, Haaretz's business newspaper, are huge – a great logistical challenge in the effort to feed 2 million people.
The demands include 11,500 tons of white flour, 6,000 tons of red lentils, 8,300 tons of vegetable oil, 1,650 tons of chickpeas and 3,500 tons of pasta.
"I don't see the Americans organizing to supply the food, not in a week and not in a month," one importer says. Another businessman adds: "It's a big project. They're talking about supplying 110,000 tons of food – that's a bidding process that could reach $500 million."
Plus, the general disorder is already great as Hamas continues to be battered in the 19-month war and the Israeli government refuses to consider a replacement for the organization as the administrator of Gaza.
'There's no rice or sugar in this tender, nor does it address the Gazans' water shortage. It contains white flour, but it's unclear how the Palestinians will bake with it without gas or electricity.
- A businessman competing in the bidding
A winner of the bidding is supposed to provide 62,388 parcels, each containing a predetermined quantity of items to feed 1.2 million people. But the tender has not clearly stipulated a period of time, and there are more than 2 million people in Gaza.
The number of parcels is based on the assumption that Gaza is run on the basis of hamulot – extended families. According to Safe Reach Solutions, every extended family with 20 people would receive a parcel every three days, distributed at four distribution centers in Gaza.
To prevent Hamas from stealing the food, the families would send someone to collect the parcel. But it's unclear what would prevent the terror group from stealing the parcel after that.
"They want a woman whose husband was killed to come and take a 20-kilo [44-pound] parcel and walk a kilometer back to her tent with it," says a businessman competing in the bidding.
Plus it's not clear how the distributors would be able to verify who represents a given family. The entity previously responsible for such tasks in Gaza, the UNRWA refugee agency, has been greatly weakened in the enclave.
Also, the tender documents mention legumes but not other kinds of vegetables or fruit or meat. Also, calorie levels remain an issue.
"There's no rice or sugar in this tender, nor does it address the Gazans' water shortage. It contains white flour, but it's unclear how the Palestinians will bake with it without gas or electricity," the businessman competing in the bidding says.
They expect that on May 27 there will already be hundreds of thousands of parcels ready for distribution, but nobody in Israel can do such a thing.
- The winning Israeli group
"Nor is it clear how SRS [Safe Reach Solutions] will pay the suppliers. It has opened an NGO in Switzerland and they're waiting for donations, but the suppliers want to know how they'll be paid.
"I have experience from the American failure in building the floating pier in Gaza, an event that showed that they're disconnected from reality. For example, how would they deal with an attempt by Gazans to harm the Americans who operate the distribution centers? Do they think that people coming to collect the food wouldn't try to blow them up?
"The Palestinians won't come with gratitude for a few kilos of legumes. They have nothing to lose."
The businessman says he's busy ensuring that the products in the parcels will not be labeled in Hebrew or with the names of Israeli companies. "The Palestinians would rather die of starvation than touch something Israeli," he says.
A bit of bin Laden
The businessman behind Safe Reach Solutions is Phil Reilly, a former senior official in the CIA. He can be seen in the first episode of the Netflix documentary "American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden." Two decades ago, Reilly was part of the first American force to land in Afghanistan on the trail of the man responsible for 9/11.
In the weeks before the Israel-Gaza cease-fire collapsed in March, Safe Reach Solutions was in charge of inspecting Gazans passing through the Netzarim corridor that bisects Gaza, an Israeli creation during the war.
The World Food Program is due to operate alongside Safe Reach Solutions in its current business, but this cooperation has stalled. Israeli businesspeople say the UN agency is demanding that the suppliers choose whether to work with it or the American company.
In early April, the World Food Program launched its own bidding process for the purchase of hundreds of tons of wheat. The winning Israeli group, which asked not to be identified, has had the goods ready in its warehouses for a month and a half and is waiting for an entry permit.
The wheat is supposed to be ground in flour mills that are still operating in Gaza. But the group estimates that the product that Safe Reach Solutions envisions will take three months to supply from the moment it is ordered.
"They expect that on May 27 there will already be hundreds of thousands of parcels ready for distribution, but nobody in Israel can do such a thing," the group said.
According to Safe Reach Solutions, the parcels would be prepared at a logistics center in the Israeli city of Ashdod 38 kilometers north of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army is preparing for the humanitarian aid operation by freeing up an area dozens of dunams large at the Morag corridor that the army created in southern Gaza. (One dunam is about a quarter acre.) That area would be the military's logistics center for the operation.
Until this operation is implemented, the immediate resumption of humanitarian aid is expected to be executed using the old method: trucks transferring their loads to trucks coming over from Gaza, a method that critics say allowed Hamas to steal food.
(c) 2025, Haaretz
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