The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, spoke on Friday about the need to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. Aid has been largely cutoff from the enclave since March 2025.
US President Donald Trump is pushing for the aid to reach Gaza, Huckabee said. He mentioned that the US State Department has announced some parameters about a new initiative to get aid in.
What does the US want to see happen?
It wants food to be distributed efficiently and safely. This should be done in a way that Hamas will not get their hands on the food.
The new program being proposed comes in the wake of Israel also approving plans for a new military offensive in Gaza.
On May 4, Israel’s security cabinet approved an offensive that is supposed to see the IDF remain in Gaza for the long term.
Israeli politicians have also spoken about moving most of Gaza’s population to southern Gaza, where they will receive aid and be separated from Hamas control.
This offensive is supposed to happen after Trump visits the Middle East in mid-May. It is also supposed to occur if Hamas does not accept a new hostage deal. There are, therefore, many complex challenges in motion at the same time.
The US has focused on the need for aid reaching Gaza before. During 2024, America was also focused on this issue.
However, it should be recalled that many previous initiatives to this end faced challenges.
The US sent a temporary floating pier across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to reach Gaza in May and June of last year. The pier did not function well, and many Americans were injured during its operation.
In addition, a World Central Kitchen aid convoy was mistakenly attacked by an IDF drone on April 1, killing seven members of the humanitarian aid group.
How will the new US initiative take shape, and what are the challenges? Huckabee discussed aspects of the aid program on Friday.
FIRST, HE said that Hamas was responsible for the horrific situation in Gaza. Huckabee said that there was a desperate need for humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza – but not Hamas.
The new program will require a partnership with governments and NGOs. He said some partners have stepped forward. The details are being worked out.
This was not an Israeli plan, Huckabee noted. Israel will not be involved in the distribution or transport of the food. Instead, it will secure the area outside of where the aid distribution happens.
This makes sense for the IDF because the military is not well-positioned to be a provider of aid, and its leadership does not want to risk the IDF in a complex aid operation.
Israel's support for the US initiative
Overall, Israel was supportive of the US initiative, the ambassador said. In the coming days, more details will be released. Nonprofit organizations will be part of the logistical considerations.
Initially, around one million people will be fed, and then the full two million in Gaza.
The delivery of aid will not depend on a ceasefire, apparently. It solely depends on the ability to get food into Gaza.
As for dispensation, the concept so far speaks of several distribution zones. Each zone may provide aid to tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
The IDF will evidently secure the perimeter of these zones in southern Gaza. Huckabee mentioned “private security” in the distribution centers themselves.
Because the IDF is not operating the aid program, this will enable some partners to take part so that these centers do not have to work directly with the IDF.
Apparently, this means some countries or NGOs that are wary of direct connections to the IDF could get involved. Publicly, the UN and other aid organizations have opposed the Israeli plan that was approved on May 4, but may be more flexible regarding the US initiative.
The initial number of aid distribution centers will be small, but the number will grow as it is scaled up, according to the Friday press conference at the US embassy in Jerusalem.
Per one question directed to Huckabee at that press conference, there are now some 400 distribution centers in Gaza, while the new initiative will only begin with a few.
The number will grow. It is not clear how many private contractors will need to be employed to secure this. If one has to scale up from three or four points of distribution to dozens, then that requires hiring a lot of private security.
The ambassador was asked about who will staff the private security and how the funding is being worked out. He said details are still in motion, and he could not give the specifics.
He added that funding would come from numerous entities. Huckabee said the US was not trying to work around the Israeli government in this initiative. The US is close to Israel, he noted.
“There is no issue here of some kind of workaround going on,” Huckabee said.
He also said this is not an Israeli operation; some partners would not want to be involved if Israel were operating the logistics of moving the food or the distribution.
The US believes that ties with Israel are ironclad and that this humanitarian aid operation will move forward, Huckabee said.
THE HURDLES here are clear. This is a large logistical operation. It requires a lot of support and organizations that are good at moving and distributing aid.
America has not been involved in something of this scale for a while. It is unclear how the private security will be recruited or deployed. Past experiences in Gaza have been problematic.
For instance, when aid was delivered after a long pause to North Gaza in late February 2024, people rushed the aid trucks. Over 100 people were killed.
The US has tried this kind of good-intentioned approach in the past. It sought to do so in Somalia in 1993. Its aim then was to enable the distribution of aid as well. However, by inserting itself in a war zone with warlords present, the US ended up in a firefight with locals, and eighteen Americans were killed in the Black Hawk Down incident.
The US is realistic regarding the challenges ahead. Huckabee and others know there are logistical challenges.
The big question is how fast this can happen and how the IDF will be able to secure the perimeter. Up until now, throughout 19 months of war in Gaza, the IDF has always asked Gazans to evacuate from areas where the IDF was operating.
There are rarely any Gazan civilians near the IDF. The army, therefore, does not seem used to dealing with large numbers of civilians.
However, this plan seems to envision the IDF controlling a long defensive line around these aid distribution points and watching over hundreds of thousands of Gazans transiting back and forth.
This appears to be a recipe for challenges ahead. How will anyone know who is a Hamas member and who is not among the people going south to get aid?
Checking them all will be a complex process. If they are all on foot, it means they cannot carry much back to their families, meaning more people will need to be checked.
If they are in cars, then they can carry more, but it increases the chance Hamas will waylay the cars when the cars return to parts of Gaza under Hamas control.
The IDF has not proven itself capable in the past of dealing with large numbers of civilians. In the West Bank, the IDF conducts raids at night because it does not want to end up doing the job of checkpoints and police work, and riot control.
Decades of Israeli military occupation have taught the IDF that it is not good at crowd control and that crowd control leads to dangerous incidents.
Crowds are hard to manage. In August 2021, a bombing occurred amid the masses at Afghanistan’s Kabul International Airport that killed 13 Americans and wounded 170 Afghans.
These are the kinds of threats the IDF will want to avoid. Large numbers of civilians pressing up against soldiers is when such threats can materialize.
If the military stands back and watches as it did on Salah a-Din road in the early months of the war, while Gazans fled south from Gaza City, then there will be no way to check the Gazan civilians. There are no easy answers here.