\n<\/p>\n
Early Tuesday morning<\/span>, while workers with the Gaza Soup Kitchen prepared to serve meals for displaced families sheltering at a United Nations school in Mashrou\u2019 Beit Lehia, Israel\u2019s bombs began to fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n For 30 minutes, Israeli military munitions and quadcopter gunfire rained down on a city block in northern Gaza, which included the U.N.-run Khalifa school, a market, and residential buildings, said mobile kitchen director Hani Almadhoun, relaying an account from his nephew, a kitchen staff member who survived the attack. Dozens scrambled for shelter from an airstrike that left at least four people dead<\/a>.<\/p>\n Among them was Almadhoun\u2019s 16-year-old cousin, Samih Ibrahim Almadhoun, who had been volunteering at the kitchen. He was killed alongside two women sheltering together, Almadhoun said. Another cousin helping at the kitchen had his arm amputated after he was struck by rocket fire. Mourners were able to bury Samih in a hastily dug grave before fleeing the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n The strike forced the kitchen out of Mashrou\u2019 Beit Lehia and further south into Jabalia. Such movement is normal for the kitchen, which operates several mobile sites throughout the Strip and relocates to wherever need is most acute. \u201cWe go where the people are,\u201d Almadhoun said. Some families have come to rely on the Gaza Soup Kitchen as their primary source of food amid the ongoing starvation<\/a> brought on by Israel\u2019s unlawful blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza. But as of late, where the kitchen goes is dictated by bombings and evacuation orders.\u00a0<\/p>\n In November, Almadhoun\u2019s brother, Gaza Soup Kitchen co-founder Mahmoud Almadhoun<\/a>, was killed in an Israeli drone strike while delivering food to Kamal Adwan Hospital, which had been under siege by the Israeli military<\/a>. Almadhoun and his family have called the attack a targeted assassination, and said the military continues to target soup kitchen workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe learned that if they bomb and they are serious, then we get the hell out,\u201d he said. \u201cWe tried to be the last man standing, then we realized the world doesn\u2019t give a shit. So, when they really push, we just run for the next area where they\u2019re going to bomb in a week or two.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the reality in Gaza: Death can come from the lack of food, or death can come from trying to find food.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s airstrike near<\/span> the soup kitchen in Mashrou\u2019 Beit Lehia was a part of a broader Israeli military a campaign launched last Sunday known as \u201cOperation Gideon\u2019s Chariots.\u201d It involves intense bombardment in the north intended to push Palestinians further south, eventually concentrating Gaza\u2019s population of about 2.1 million people into what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a \u201csterile zone,\u201d completely controlled by the Israeli military. The Israeli government has also used the term \u201csterile zone\u201d in the occupied West Bank<\/a> to refer to areas that isolate Palestinians while giving access to Israeli settlers. The zone would be the only place in the Strip where Palestinians could receive food and aid supplies. Aid would be funneled into four distribution sites<\/a>, with three in southern Gaza run by a new Swiss-based nonprofit and two U.S.-based security firms.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both Israel and the U.S. claim the aid plan is meant to keep supplies from getting in the hands of Hamas, which they accuse of stealing goods and enriching themselves in the black market, an allegation denied by both Hamas and aid groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this month at a Jewish settler conference<\/a>, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of Netanyahu\u2019s far-right cabinet who has long called for the establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza<\/a>, previewed the plan to push Palestinians to the south, referring to southern Gaza as \u201ca humanitarian zone\u201d along its border with Egypt. From the south, he said according to translations from Hebrew, Palestinians \u201cwill start to leave in great numbers to third countries\u201d due to poor living conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n The southern Gaza area where Israel intends to push Palestinians has been under Israeli occupation since late March, when its military forced civilians out of the area\u2019s largest city, Rafah. Though much of Rafah already lay in ruins from previous bombing campaigns, the Israeli military has been destroying<\/a> what few structures remain<\/a>. During its occupation, Israel established the Morag Corridor \u2014 a new road named for a former Israeli settlement in Gaza \u2014 that cuts off southern Gaza from the rest of the Strip. While Netanyahu has said the security corridor is intended to root out Hamas militants, officials have also been vocal about their intent to erase Palestinian civilians.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey will be totally despairing,\u201d Smotrich said of Palestinians during the pro-settler conference, \u201cunderstanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.\u201d<\/p>\n When discussing Operation Gideon\u2019s Chariots, Netanyahu on Wednesday echoed his right-wing ally, telling reporters<\/a> that among his conditions \u201cto end the war\u201d is the demand that Hamas disarms and is exiled from Gaza. He also said that Israel will \u201ccarry out the Trump plan,\u201d likely referring to President Donald Trump\u2019s proposal to turn Gaza into \u201cthe Riviera of the Middle East<\/a>\u201d and relocate its Palestinian residents to neighboring countries<\/a> \u2014 a premise aligned with the long-held vision<\/a> of far-right settler groups in Israel. NBC News recently reported<\/a> that the Trump administration had been working on a plan to permanently displace as many as 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya, which has its own issues of instability and violence, and is known to mistreat migrants. Though U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was not aware of the Libya plan, he repeated Trump\u2019s plan of displacing Palestinians to other third-party nations.<\/p>\n Netanyahu credited Trump\u2019s proposal on Wednesday as \u201ca plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n To Almadhoun, it\u2019s obvious what comes next.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the final stage of ethnic cleansing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n On top of his work with Gaza Food Kitchen, Almadhoun heads philanthropy efforts for the U.S. wing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, which manages most of the direct aid to Palestinians. Almadhoun is based in Virginia, but much of his family \u2014 including his mother, siblings, nieces, and nephews \u2014 live in Gaza. Along with the brother killed in the hospital attack, another brother was killed alongside his family by an Israeli airstrike in their home in early 2024. Almadhoun said he fears his remaining family will be forced south under the plan, into a humanitarian zone that he calls an \u201cinternment camp.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur family will hold on to Gaza as long as we can,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I fear I\u2019m going to lose another person that I care deeply about.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s plan to<\/span> control dispersal of aid has drawn wide condemnation from Palestinians, human rights organizations, aid groups, and the United Nations, which are responsible for the majority of aid distribution in Gaza.\u00a0<\/p>\n A little-known Swiss-based organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, is slated to lead Israel\u2019s U.S.-backed<\/a> aid plan for Palestinians displaced to southern Gaza. The organization was run by former U.S. Marine sniper Jake Wood, who received recognition for his disaster relief work in Haiti, for two months. Wood announced<\/a> that he had resigned from GHF on Sunday, stating that the foundation would not be able to adhere \u201cto the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.\u201d<\/p>\n GHF was founded in February and has already received a reported $100 million<\/a> from a foreign government donor, prompting questions about the sources of its funding. The foundation is expected to manage the distribution of aid in the designated sites, with security administered by two American private security firms: Safe Reach Solutions<\/a>, based in Wyoming, and UG Solutions<\/a>, based in North Carolina, which are reportedly staffed by former CIA, Blackwater and U.S. military personnel<\/a>. Armed contractors with the firms previously ran checkpoints<\/a> along the Netzarim Corridor during the ceasefire earlier this year as Palestinians returned north. There have been reports that the security firms would use facial recognition<\/a> on Palestinians seeking aid, which Wood has dismissed as \u201cmisinformation.\u201d The aid plan is set to take effect in late May, Netanyahu has said, with the Israeli military providing limited security support.\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.N. typically operates 400 distribution sites; the Israeli plan would trim that down to four. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Aid groups and the United Nations have rejected the plan<\/a>, which circumvents humanitarian guidelines and the existing structures in place to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Lacking buy-in from the U.N. would mean the more than 13,000 UNRWA aid workers in Gaza would be sidelined. The U.N. typically operates 400 distribution sites; the Israeli plan would trim that down to four. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the plan leaves Palestinians with \u201cimpossible choice<\/a> between displacement and death.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Scott Paul, Oxfam America\u2019s director of peace and security, dismissed the aid plan for forcing Palestinians to \u201creshuffle their lives and dramatically shift where they\u2019re living in service of political agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a plan that would inevitably leave behind hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million Palestinians, many of whom would be the most vulnerable and endangered people in the Gaza strip,\u201d Paul said. He added that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation\u2019s plan leaves \u201cmeaningful assistance as an afterthought\u201d and doesn\u2019t address other necessary aid, such as clinical health services, outpatient health services, shelter needs, waste management, and access to clean water.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMostly what we\u2019re talking about is the desire to avoid the appearance of complicity in a famine,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n Mara Kronenfeld, executive director of UNRWA USA, likened the plan to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany that her grandfather fled and where his sister and her family were later killed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPutting the same country that is out-loud threatening extermination and has already transformed most of Gaza into rubble, and then actively pushing people out,\u201d Kronenfeld said, \u201cputting that entity in charge of humanitarian aid to keep people alive is just flat-out a combination of laughable and evil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n