Palestinians have denounced a newly proposed U.S.-Israeli aid scheme in Gaza as a cynical ploy to use humanitarian relief as a tool of military strategy, sparking widespread outrage among rights groups and UN agencies. While Gaza plunges deeper into starvation, with over two million people trapped without sufficient food, medicine or water, aid is now being offered not as a lifeline — but as leverage.

The plan, approved by the Israeli Cabinet and supported by Washington, would see aid deliveries filtered through a new mechanism under military oversight, operating from so-called “safe zones” inside the Strip. But for Palestinians facing constant bombardment and displacement, these zones are anything but safe. Humanitarian organisations warn that the plan aims to coerce people in northern Gaza to flee southwards — a forced transfer masked as assistance.

UN bodies including OCHA and UNICEF have refused to take part, declaring the initiative incompatible with humanitarian principles. UNICEF’s James Elder described it as offering civilians a lethal choice: “displacement or death.” The European Union, too, condemned the politicisation of aid and called for an immediate end to the blockade that has suffocated Gaza for more than two months.

With only 60 aid trucks allowed in daily — far below the minimum needed — hunger is now being weaponised. Children are dying of malnutrition, families are drinking contaminated water, and hospitals are running on empty. Yet rather than supporting UNRWA, the only body with the infrastructure to deliver aid effectively, the plan sidelines it in favour of a new, untested entity under Israeli control.

For Palestinians, this is not humanitarianism — it is humiliation. It is control dressed as compassion. And as the siege tightens, many fear that Gaza’s hunger is no longer a consequence of war, but a deliberate tool within it.