The siege of Gaza and the rise of a militarized neoliberal relief architecture

On October 9, 2023, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declared a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” This brutal policy, more than just rhetoric, marked an unprecedented escalation of Israel’s 17-year blockade, shifting from containment to total isolation. The goal was not just to defeat armed groups but to break Gaza’s civilian population.

The next day, Gallant promised a “full offense.” What followed was not just a war, but a campaign of destruction unmatched in this century. Entire neighbourhoods were flattened. Civilian infrastructure was deliberately targeted. Nineteen months later, in defiance of International Court of Justice rulings, Israeli bombardment and siege tactics persist, unchecked.

Humanitarianism under siege

Throughout this campaign, Israel has not only destroyed homes and hospitals, it has also waged war on the humanitarian system itself. Medical convoys, food aid trucks, and humanitarian facilities have been systematically targeted, even when their locations were clearly shared with Israeli forces.

On April 1, 2024, Israeli airstrikes killed seven workers from World Central Kitchen. That horror was eclipsed less than a year later, when 15 emergency medical staff were killed in Rafah while travelling in clearly marked ambulances. The message is chilling: neutrality offers no protection.

More than 400 humanitarian workers have been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since October 2023, including 300 UNRWA staff members. This is the highest aid worker death toll in UN history.

Meanwhile, Israel has dismantled its “deconfliction” system, removing even the pretence of protecting humanitarian space. At the same time, it has moved to legally eradicate UNRWA’s presence. In October 2024, the Knesset passed legislation banning it from operating in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

As Naomi Klein warned in The Shock Doctrine, crises often serve as cover to dismantle public systems and impose privatized, politicized alternatives. In Gaza, Israel is not just starving a population, it is attempting to erase the humanitarian principles that once protected them.

Birth of a new paradigm

As the siege tightened, Western governments sought to deliver aid without crossing Israeli red lines. In November 2023, the EU launched the Amalthea maritime initiative from Cyprus. Activated in March 2024, the initiative to transport aid to Gaza via Open Arms boats was designed not for speed or volume, but to comply with Israeli inspection and control rules.

Then came a US proposal: a logistics plan implemented by Fogbow, a US-based firm staffed by former military and intelligence officials that would also deliver aid from Cyprus directly to Gaza through a US military-built floating pier.

From the start, the project faltered. Although Fogbow had established a fundraising arm in Geneva, the Maritime Humanitarian Aid Foundation, and its team toured world capitals seeking financial backing, donations failed to materialize. To keep operations afloat, the company resorted to purchasing flour locally in Cyprus. However, the US-built floating pier, central to the initiative, operated only briefly in June, with Fogbow’s delivery activities lasting just two days (June 6–8, 2024). From July to August, aid shipments were rerouted through Israel’s Ashdod port. Despite these setbacks and the limited scope of its engagement, Fogbow declared its Gaza mission “complete.” In this model, success is no longer measured by aid delivered or lives protected, but by streamlined logistics and alignment with military directives.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

In hindsight, Fogbow’s operations in Gaza served only as a pilot. By May 2025, following Israel’s unilateral termination of the ceasefire on March 17 and the renewal of a full-scale blockade that now starves Gaza’s population, Israel, with US backing, unveiled the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Far from a temporary solution, GHF represents a structural attempt to overhaul the entire humanitarian response in Gaza. It is designed not as a complement to existing systems, but as a replacement architecture, one that deliberately bypasses multilateral coordination and sidesteps international humanitarian law.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation plans to operate through “Secure Distribution Sites” guarded by private security firms and situated entirely outside established humanitarian coordination frameworks. Claiming in a fourteen-page pamphlet that “traditional humanitarian channels have collapsed,” it presents itself as a more “efficient” and “neutral” solution. Yet its deep alignment with Israel security interests casts serious doubt on its neutrality among UN humanitarians. The structure of its model is also revealing. Palestinians are expected to receive standardized rations, bottled water, hygiene kits, blankets, and other essentials, not as entitlements, but as tightly managed distributions under surveillance.

In a context now defined by siege and the near-total denial of humanitarian access since March, relief has been reduced to logistics. Aid is no longer about meeting people’s needs with dignity or restoring their agency. Instead of empowering families, GHF imposes rationed survival, managed by private firms under military coordination. What replaces international humanitarian law is not an alternative framework of care, but an infrastructure of control. Aid becomes a commodity to be distributed, not a right to be upheld.

What this means for humanitarianism

The rise of this militarized neoliberal relief architecture represents more than institutional change. It is a redefinition of humanitarianism itself. Impartiality, neutrality, and independence, the core principles of humanitarian work, along with dignity, are being gutted in favour of strategic alignment, privatization, and militarized control.

This shift carries far-reaching consequences for the very foundations of humanitarianism. Accountability is no longer rooted in the protection of rights, but in the metrics of delivery, meals counted, shipments tracked, operations completed. Aid becomes transactional, stripped of its moral obligation and recast as a service that can be paused, redirected, or politicized at will. Neutrality is hollowed out, while institutions like UNRWA are criminalized and delegitimized, and private contractors aligned with occupying powers are repackaged as “neutral” actors. Multilateralism, once the backbone of coordinated humanitarian response, is sidelined by donor-led foundations and closed bilateral arrangements. In this emerging order, crisis itself becomes a business model, and humanitarian space is transformed into a marketplace for geopolitical influence, logistical experimentation, and private profit.

As Klein warned, moments of disaster do not just destroy, they restructure. Gaza is not just experiencing a collapse of humanitarian aid. It is becoming the test site for a new global model: relief without rights, access without international law, and aid without solidarity.

Resisting the architecture of exploitation

The dismantling of humanitarianism in Gaza is not an accident. It is the outcome of deliberate strategy. From Fogbow’s brief operation to the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, we are witnessing the birth of a system where aid is delivered on the terms of the powerful, not the needs of the people.

This shift has drawn strong rebuke from across the international system. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly called for unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza. On May 13, 2025, those calls were sharpened by UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, who condemned Israel’s proposed aid plan as a “cynical sideshow” and a “deliberate distraction.” He warned that the model restricts access, displaces civilians, and politicizes humanitarian assistance. His remarks were echoed by members of the UN Security Council, where member states voiced concern over Israel’s refusal to permit full and sustained aid operations.

Despite widespread condemnation, satellite imagery reveals that over recent weeks land has been cleared, and new roads and staging areas have been built at multiple locations across southern and central Gaza, confirming the physical rollout of plans.

To preserve the core of humanitarianism, a collective stand is urgently needed, from principled states, multilateral institutions, civil society, and frontline actors. This moment demands reclaiming humanitarianism as a political and moral commitment, a defence of universal rights, protection without condition, and solidarity over strategy. Without such resistance, we will not only lose Gaza, we will lose the very foundation upon which global humanitarian action is built.

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María del Mar Logroño Narbona is Senior Advisor at the Amman-based think tank Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD).