Although nothing is final until deployment, the two companies expected to handle Gaza food aid distribution once Israel reopens the spigot to facilitate the aid are American companies: Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, the Jerusalem Post has confirmed.
These are the same companies who, along with certain Egyptian officials, supervised the checking of vehicles seeking to pass through from southern to northern Gaza in January of this year after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at the time went into effect.
The companies’ personnel often have special forces or CIA backgrounds to be qualified for handling complex foreign missions.
Although there is still no set date, the food aid is expected to be restarted in the coming weeks.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir is now just waiting for the security cabinet to approve the plans, given that Israel is concerned that without restarting the food aid in the coming weeks, there could be a risk of a shortage of food in Gaza.
Some additional complications which will still need to be resolved are how many trucks will be allowed to pass into Gaza per day, the process for handing out the food to avoid Hamas theft of the food, who will provide the food, and how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will handle objections from his most right-wing coalition partners.
Israel tied aid flow to additional hostage exchanges
In early March, a variety of top governmental figures had said that Israel would permanently block the flow of new humanitarian aid to Gaza unless Hamas agreed to additional hostage exchanges.
However, the Post reported last week that Israel was concerned that the extra food aid Gaza received prior to early March – which it has been using for sustenance since – would run out within weeks.
Zamir had made it clear that he opposed IDF involvement in directly distributing the food – though he might not oppose the IDF providing security for food aid distribution, to make sure that it is not given directly to Hamas.
The government and Netanyahu had hope hoped that the combined impact of halting new food aid, renewing the IDF invasion of Gaza after March 18-19, and diplomatic pressure from the new Trump administration, would lead to a new hostage deal in less than the three months or so that it would take for the surplus food inventory in the Gaza Strip to run out. But there is still no breakthrough in sight.
From January 19 to early March, Gaza received around 650 trucks of food aid per day, far more than the estimated 200 to 300 trucks per day that it is estimated to need, leaving a surplus of food aid for the last two months which avoided any real threat of starvation in the Strip.
The Washington Post has reported that there will be five distribution centers in Gaza where individual families will be able to pick up two weeks of food at a time once the program starts.
Further, that report estimated that initially only around 60 trucks per day would enter the Strip, but it is unclear whether 60 trucks per day was the new goal for the new program, or was just starting it at a smaller level with opportunities to expand.
Estimates mid-war were that Gaza needs around 200-300 trucks per day of food aid to sustain the civilian population.
There are also questions about how much international aid groups will cooperate with this new model for handing out the food as some have said that if the food is only handed out in parts of Gaza – the first pilot program would be in southern Gaza – this would violate their principles of no discrimination with food aid.
Further, they have questioned whether it is practical for family members to be able to carry food out for two whole weeks to their families from the distribution centers.
Yet, whether those groups are really willing to boycott sending food into Gaza once Israel gives them the chance again, even if under conditions they do not like, is an open question.
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