A Gaza aid delivery project described as neutral and run by American contractors was conceived by several Israelis, including businessmen with close links to the government, raising concerns over transparency and neutrality, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is a US- and Israel-backed aid organization that was established to manage a new model for distributing humanitarian aid in the Strip in a manner that does not allow its diversion by Hamas.

It was built in close coordination with Israel amid mounting mistrust between Jerusalem and UN-backed aid groups that have been operating in the Strip to date, but the organization and US officials have maintained that it is an independent and neutral body.

However, the NYT report revealed that the project wasn’t simply built in coordination with Israel, but is “an Israeli brainchild.”

The idea was first proposed in late 2023 at “private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government” who believed the government lacked a long-term Gaza strategy, the report said.

The report posited that the “project’s genesis” occurred when “hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians rejoined the military as reservists, many of them reaching positions of influence,” following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks.

This created “a huge cohort of Israelis with one foot in the military and another in civilian life, blurring the boundary between the two worlds.”

The group’s central idea was to bypass traditional aid channels like the UN by hiring private contractors to distribute aid in pockets of Gaza under Israeli control, thus weakening Hamas’s grip without formally assuming responsibility for Gaza’s civilian population.

Key players in the new plan included venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg, who was not in the military, Yotam HaCohen, a strategic consultant who joined the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and later became an aide to the prime minister’s military secretary Brig. Gen. Roman Gofman, and Liran Tancman, a tech investor also affiliated with COGAT.

By early 2024, Israeli officials had begun promoting Philip F. Reilly, a former senior CIA officer who trained Contra fighters in Nicaragua and served as CIA station chief in Kabul, as their preferred contractor.

Reilly confirmed to the newspaper that he met with Eisenberg and Tancman and began discussing Gaza aid with Israeli civilians that year.

Reilly’s S.R.S. security firm began operating in Gaza in January 2025, screening Palestinian cars for weapons during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

According to a separate Haaretz report published Sunday, S.R.S entered Gaza without any prior security clearance from the Shin Bet as is the procedure. Gofman reportedly handpicked S.R.S. in a secretive process that bypassed standard procedures and excluded key defense bodies, including the Shin Bet, the IDF, and the Defense Ministry.

Sources told the outlet that the process appeared pre-decided in favor of Reilly’s company and that the Prime Minister’s Office, especially Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a key Netanyahu confidant, played a central role in pushing it forward.

Businessman Shlomi Fogel, also a Netanyahu confidant, was also named in connection but has denied involvement.

Many within the defense establishment suspect personal and financial motives may be driving the operation, given the lack of transparency and the exclusion of official oversight bodies, Haaretz reported.

Another key revelation of The New York Times report was that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was registered in the US, not Switzerland, as previously believed.

Two entities – GHF and the private security firm S.R.S. – were registered in November 2024 by associates of Reilly.

GHF, led by Jake Wood, will supposedly raise funds and hire S.R.S. to secure food distribution. Though Wood said the two groups now operate independently, they were registered by the same US lawyer and shared a spokeswoman until recently.

Adding to the confusion, at least two other organizations named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation exist—one registered in the US and another in Switzerland. A spokesman for Wood’s foundation clarified that the Delaware-based GHF, established in February 2025, is connected to their operation.

Meanwhile, TRIAL International, a Swiss NGO, has asked Swiss authorities to investigate the Geneva-based GHF to determine if it complied with Swiss law and international humanitarian standards. The group filed two submissions on May 20 and 21, calling for regulatory scrutiny of the foundation’s activities.

It’s also unclear who is funding the GHF, which claims to have more than $100 million in commitments from a foreign government donor but has not named the donor.

Wood said it received a small amount of seed money from unnamed non-Israeli businessmen. The foundation said in a statement that a Western European country had donated over $100 million but declined to name the country, according to the Times.

The foundation published a 14-page document detailing their distribution plan, including the names of those leading the project. Two American companies, Safe Reach Solutions (S.R.S.) and UG Solutions, were selected to serve as on-site contractors.

Israel says it must take control of aid distribution, arguing that Hamas and other terrorists siphon off supplies and that some aid organizations have been infiltrated by terror groups. Aid workers deny there is a significant diversion of aid to terrorists, saying the UN strictly monitors distribution.

Aid groups have been pushing back on the GHF and Israel’s plans to take over the handling of food aid, saying it could forcibly displace large numbers of Palestinians by pushing them toward the distribution hubs and that the foundation can’t meet the needs of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel had blocked food, fuel, medicine, and all other supplies from entering Gaza since early March, only lifting the blockade last week to allow limited numbers of aid trucks to enter, amid a worsening humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians there.

Experts have warned of a high risk of famine, and even the United States, a staunch ally, has voiced concerns over the hunger crisis.

The war broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251. Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 58 hostages.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 53,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Tal Schneider contributed to this report.