Israel and UN Clash Over Gaza Humanitarian Efforts

Israel and the United Nations (UN) are clashing over humanitarian aid distribution in the Gaza strip. 

For months, Israel has directly organized and monitored humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza after substituting the UN’s Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). 

GHF is financed by Israel, the US, and allies and was created in February 2025 following reports revealing UNRWA had extensive ties to Hamas. 

Since then, Israel and allies have boasted of GHF’s work distributing millions of tons of aid to Palestinian civilians. 

Critics, however, complain that aid efforts by GHF and Israel are insufficient and procedures for obtaining the aid are overly restrictive. 

UNRWA recently brazenly claimed, for example, that GHF and Israel are “starving civilians in Gaza.”

Progressive lawmakers including Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have similarly condemned Israel’s relief efforts. 

Israel has responded to such criticisms by emphasizing how previous aid efforts were routinely hijacked by Hamas and that GHF has already distributed nearly two million tons of aid and enabled the entry of over 95,000 aid truckloads into Gaza. 

Additionally, Israel discredited UNRWA’s attacks by claiming that “UNRWA has become a hub for Hamas terrorists, with UNRWA workers taking active part in the Oct 7 massacre.”

Israeli reports uncovered that around 1,200 of UNRWA’s 12,000 Gaza employees had links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Additionally, nearly 6,000 had close relatives working for Islamist fundamentalist groups.

Following the reports, President Donald Trump signed executive orders freezing funding to UN agencies like UNRWA and reviewing US funding for the UN more broadly. 

Conservatives have consistently been skeptical of the UN and UNRWA’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war.

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), for example, went as far as to argue that “the U.S. MUST reconsider its relationship with the@UN,” adding that “it's disgusting to think a single U.S. taxpayer dollar could have funded these evils.”