The IDF on Tuesday celebrated the announcement of the opening of two large food distribution centers by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which in turn said it had handed out around 462,000 meals’ worth of food.
However, the first day of distributions was plagued by ongoing controversy.
At one point in the afternoon, the Palestinian crowds who had come to receive food overran the facility’s outer defenses, trying to seize as much food as they could for themselves. This led the IDF and the US security contractors running the facility to fire warning shots in the air to make the crowd back off.
There were no reports of killing Palestinian civilians, but there were many videos on social media showing chaotic scenes of Palestinian civilians fleeing the sound of gunfire coming from a food facility where they had hoped to receive nourishment.
Some on social media said that the shooting was targeting the Palestinian civilians, while the IDF said the shots were fired in the air and that no helicopter had opened fire, but that it was merely patrolling the nearby coast.
Still, the incident marred the opening of the food centers, which have sparked controversies on a regular basis over recent weeks.
In the past hour, two initial distribution centers of humanitarian aid were opened in the Rafah area of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/lGOcx0oIyV
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) May 27, 2025
One center is located at Tel Sultan in Rafah in deep southern Gaza, while the other is at the Morag Corridor, a bit north of Rafah. A third is expected to open near Khan Yunis in mid-southern Gaza, and a fourth in central Gaza, though it is still unclear if these other facilities are days or weeks away from opening.
Sources told The Jerusalem Post that the food centers would reach their maximum food distribution capacity relatively rapidly, but there was also no exact deadline for that.
Currently, there are no immediate plans to open up such a center in northern Gaza, which means that the estimated one million Palestinians there will continue to receive food from UN groups as they have this past week and for much of the war.
New guidelines to prevent Hamas from gaining control of the aid
Sources told the Post that new guidelines and techniques would be followed to prevent Hamas from gaining control of the food in northern Gaza. The whole reason that Israel has worked with US companies and global aid groups to establish the four new food centers in central and southern Gaza is to break Hamas’s control over food, which the UN groups have done little to stop.
The new centers are run by the American companies UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions as part of a new Gaza humanitarian authority.
However, there has been controversy regarding who runs the centers, with a number of the companies’ top managers resigning in recent days due to pressure from global groups who view the food centers as problematic moves by Israel to control or restrict food reaching portions of the population connected with Hamas.
Part of the policy with northern Gaza may also be to satisfy objections from the UN and food aid groups that say it is illegal for Israel to decide that some groups can receive food, while others (Hamas forces) cannot.
While the UN and human rights groups condemn Hamas, they also refuse to set any limits on who can receive food.In contrast, the new food centers will involve a mix of Israeli and US security checks, which could allow the IDF to arrest suspected Hamas members and certainly to arrest anyone who is armed.
Additionally, locating these centers away from northern Gaza is designed to divide Gaza into sectors that will become Hamas-free, even if other sectors still contain terrorists.
The centers are being rolled out as five IDF divisions invaded more deeply into Gaza last week.
The IDF said that the current phase of the invasion, which involves taking over up to 75% of Gazan territory and rolling out and normalizing the new food distribution model, could be drawn out over around two months, with hopes that this would lead to breaking Hamas’s control over the population.