Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era

Special Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era
Demonstrators trample a carpet with a design showing President Bashar Al-Assad during a protest. (AFP)
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Updated 09 December 2024
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Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era

Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era
  • What began as a bloodless coup by Hafez Assad in 1970 has ended with his son Bashar fleeing the country
  • Bashar Assad “inherited and built upon” the record of brutal repression that was part of his father’s long rule

LONDON: In scenes reminiscent of every violent regime change in the Middle East’s recent history, on Saturday afternoon jubilant crowds in the Jaramana suburb of Damascus toppled a statue of Hafez Assad, founder of the family regime that, until this weekend, had ruled Syria for over half a century.
The beheading of the larger-than-life bust, captured in shaky smartphone footage, spoke volumes about the roots of the crisis that is now engulfing Syria.
President Bashar Assad, who fled Syria and was granted asylum along with his family by Russia on Sunday, inherited an autocratic system that his father had forged out of the chaos that was the Syrian political landscape for two decades after the country gained its independence in 1949.
Together with Lebanon, Syria, an Ottoman province since the early 16th century, was occupied by France in 1919 after the defeat of the empire in the First World War, and in 1923 became a French mandate under the auspices of the League of Nations.
The mandate triggered a multifactional revolt against French rule, which raged from 1925 to 1927 until it was finally put down by overwhelming French military force.




Bashar Assad fled to Russia on Saturday as rebels took the Syrian capital. (AFP/File)


A complex but relatively peaceful two decades followed until, in the wake of the Second World War, Syria finally won its long-promised independence in 1946.
But the golden era anticipated by Syrians failed to dawn. From 1949 to 1970, the country was wracked by a series of 20 military coups, or attempted coups.
To Syrians and international observers alike, it seemed that Syria was doomed to basket-case status. But waiting in the wings was a man who, in time, would appear to be the answer to the troubled nation’s prayers.
By all accounts, Hafez, born on Oct. 6, 1930, one of 11 children of a poor Alawite farming family, never wanted to be a dictator, or even be involved in politics.
Instead, he wanted to become a doctor, a dream that foundered on the inability of his father, Ali Sulayman, to pay for his tuition (Sulayman would later adopt his local nickname, Al-Assad, “the lion,” as his family’s surname.)
Instead, in 1950 Hafez enrolled in the fee-free Homs Military Academy, learned to fly, joined the Syrian Air Force — and found himself embroiled in the febrile atmosphere of plot and counterplot that prevailed within the military establishment.




Hafez Al-Assad and his wife Anisseh posing for a family picture with his children (L to R) Maher, Bashar, Bassel, Majd and Bushra. (AFP)


In 1955, President Adib Al-Shishakli was overthrown in a military coup that saw the return of civilian government in Syria. For the next few years, Hafez saw active service, training on MiG fighters in Russia and flying air defense missions during the Suez crisis.
Following the formation by Syria and Egypt of the short-lived United Arab Republic in 1958, the air force officer became increasingly politicized, so much so that in March 1963 he played a prominent role in the Ba’athist military coup against Syrian President Nazim Al-Kudsi.
By now, Hafez was in charge of the Syrian Air Force and a member of both the Syrian Regional Command of the Ba’ath Party and the Military Committee, a powerful Ba’athist group within the Syrian military establishment.

KEY DATES OF ASSAD FAMILY RULE

• Oct. 6, 1930: Hafez Assad, son of a poor farmer, is born in Qardaha in northwest Syria.

• 1950: Hafez Assad enters Homs Military Academy.

• February 1966: Hafez Assad appointed defense minister after military coup.

• Nov. 12, 1970: Hafez Assad leads bloodless coup, becoming president of Syria in March 1971.

• June 10, 2000: Hafez Assad dies and is succeeded by his son, Bashar Assad.

• 2012: Protests against Assad’s oppressive regime escalate into civil war.

• Dec. 6, 2024: Era of Assad dynasty ends as Damascus is seized by rebels and Bashar flees to Russia.

In February 1966, the Military Committee overthrew the Ba’ath Party’s ruling National Command, and Hafez was appointed minister of defense by coup leader Salah Jadid, chief of staff of the Syrian army.
For Jadid, the appointment would prove to be a disastrous miscalculation. On Nov. 12, 1970, Hafez mounted his own bloodless coup. At first, at least, his “Corrective Revolution” (Al-Thawra Al-Tashihiyya) appeared to promise a fresh start for all Syrians.
In the words of Patrick Seale, author of the 1988 biography “Assad of Syria: The Struggle for The Middle East,” Hafez’s rule began “with an immediate and considerable advantage: the regime he displaced was so detested that any alternative came as a relief.




Hafez’s basic accomplishment “was to transform the Syrian political order from a coup-ridden, postcolonial, semi-state into a veritable model of all authoritarian stability.” (AFP/File)


“As it was an open secret that he was more liberal than Salah Jadid, his victory ushered in a political honeymoon. People were long to breathe more freely.”
Hafez’s basic accomplishment, according to an assessment of his legacy published in 2005 by the Brookings Institution, “was to transform the Syrian political order from a coup-ridden, postcolonial, semi-state into a veritable model of all authoritarian stability.”
In the process, he established a power structure that defined “fundamental political choices” for his son.
By the time of his death in June 2000, the victim of a cardiac arrest at the age of 69, for 30 years Syria had been in the grip of “a highly developed and coercive police state apparatus,” designed to “put down perceived, potential, and real threats to the regime.”


As a result, “an ongoing record of brutal repression remains an important and inescapable part of Assad’s legacy” — and one that his son would inherit and build upon.
Like his father before him, Bashar sought a career in medicine, studying in Damascus and working as a doctor in the Syrian army before moving to the UK in the 1990s to train as an ophthalmologist.
He was never expected to enter the family business. His father was grooming his eldest son, Bassel, as his successor, but this plan was derailed when Bassel died in a car crash in 1994.




Syrian fighters set alight a picture of  Bashar Al-Assad. (AFP)


Bashar was recalled to Syria, where he entered the military academy in Homs and spent the next six years preparing to succeed his father, surrounding himself with loyal Ba’athist and Alawite supporters in the party and the military.
As the only candidate for the presidency after his father’s death on June 10, 2000, 34-year-old Bashar was a shoo-in — once the Syrian constitution had been amended to lower the age limit for the job from 40.
From the outset, Bashar followed his father’s lead. His first task was to prove himself equal to the job by cracking down ruthlessly on the outbreak of dissent that followed his father’s death.
The demands of protesters, characterized as the “Damascus Spring,” were articulated by the “Statement of 99,” a manifesto signed by intellectuals calling for a new era of freedom of speech and an end to state oppression and imprisonment of political opponents.
Multiple arrests and crackdowns brought about the demise of the Damascus Spring, but the seeds it had sown were only dormant, not dead.




Hafez Al-Assad's sons Maher (R) and Majed (3rd R), his brother Jami (2nd R), son-in-law Syrian General Assef Shawkat (2nd L), and Syrian Baath Party Deputy Secretary General Abdallah al-Ahmar (L). (AFP)


In March 2011, as part of the so-called Arab Spring, a series of mass pro-democracy protests broke out across Syria, with demonstrators demanding the end of the Assad regime.
The protests were met with a brutal crackdown, prompting a descent into what the UN officially declared to be a civil war in June 2012 — a war that has drawn in multiple different players, including Daesh and Al-Qaeda.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, by March this year, 13 years on from the start of the seemingly endless war, Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people. Among them are more than 164,000 civilians, including over 15,000 women and 25,000 children, with millions more displaced from their homes.
In its desperate bid to cling on to power, the Assad regime had used a range of barbaric weaponry, including crude but indiscriminately deadly “barrel bombs,” dropped on civilians from helicopters.
In breach of international law, the regime had also regularly deployed chemical weapons, including the neurotoxin sarin, against civilians and armed factions alike.
In 2012, in a deal to stave off threatened air attacks by the US, brokered by his ally Russia, Assad promised to give up his chemical weapons and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.




Portraits of people allegedly killed during the 1982 Hama massacre. (AFP/File)


But only the following year, in August 2013, shocking photographs emerged of child victims of chemical attacks that had been carried out against areas held by militant groups in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
Last month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons revealed that Assad’s pledges to hand over all such weapons had still not been met.
As Western sanctions imposed in the wake of state violence in 2011 bit deeper, the Assad regime became, in effect, a narco-state, increasingly dependent for cash flow on sales of the drug Captagon, which has devastated the lives of so many young people and their families across the Middle East.
As an Arab News Deep Dive published in February 2023 revealed, “the vast majority of the tens of millions of pills flooding the Arabian Peninsula every year are manufactured on the doorstep, mainly in Syria and with the active involvement of the regime of President Bashar Assad.”
Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at New Lines, told Arab News there was no doubt that Captagon was “being produced and trafficked by an array of individuals that are very close to the Assad regime, some of them cousins and relatives of regime members.”
Most notable among them, she said, was Bashar’s brother, Maher, affiliated with production and smuggling efforts in his role as commander of the Fourth Armored Division, a military unit whose primary mission was to protect the Syrian regime from internal and external threats.




People celebrate with anti-government fighters at Umayyad Square in Damascus. (AFP)


Since the start of the Syrian civil war a decade ago, what had begun as a trickle of captagon into the region had turned into a flood. Facing global sanctions that have left it desperate for revenue, the Syrian regime has gone into the drug-manufacturing business, working with Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Lebanon to smuggle industrial quantities of captagon into Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, by land, sea and air.
According to a report published in April 2022 by Washington think tank the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, war-torn Syria had become “the hub for industrial-sized production.” It added that “elements of the Syrian government are key drivers of the Captagon trade, with ministerial-level complicity in production and smuggling, using the trade as a means for political and economic survival amid international sanctions.”




Era of Assad dynasty ends as Damascus is seized by rebels and Basher Assad flees to Russia. (AFP/File)


In a statement in August 2012, US President Barack Obama said Bashar “has lost legitimacy (and) needs to step down. So far, he hasn’t gotten the message, and instead has doubled down in violence on his own people.”
He added: “The international community has sent a clear message that rather than drag his country into civil war he should move in the direction of a political transition. But at this point, the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant.”
Today, with Bashar showing up in Moscow and Damascus in the hands of the rebels, Syrians can only pray that, with the Assad dynasty seemingly out of power after half a century of tyranny, their traumatized country’s long overdue soft landing is, finally, imminent.

 


Syrian authorities announce closure of notorious desert camp

Updated 32 sec ago
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Syrian authorities announce closure of notorious desert camp

Syrian authorities announce closure of notorious desert camp
DAMASCUS: A notorious desert refugee camp in Syria has closed after the last remaining families returned to their areas of origin, Syrian authorities said on Saturday.
The Rukban camp in Syria’s desert was established in 2014, at the height of Syria’s civil war, in a de-confliction zone controlled by the US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group, near the borders with Jordan and Iraq.
Desperate people fleeing IS jihadists and former government bombardment sought refuge there, hoping to cross into Jordan.
Former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government rarely allowed aid to enter the camp and neighboring countries closed their borders to the area, isolating Rukban for years.
After an Islamist-led offensive toppled Assad in December, families started leaving the camp to return home.
The Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based organization, said on Friday that the camp was “officially closed and empty, all families and residents have returned to their homes.”
Syrian Information Minister Hamza Al-Mustafa said on X on Saturday that “with the dismantlement of the Rukban camp and the return of the displaced, a tragic and sorrowful chapter of displacement stories created by the bygone regime’s war machine comes to a close.”
“Rukban was not just a camp, it was the triangle of death that bore witness to the cruelty of siege and starvation, where the regime left people to face their painful fate in the barren desert,” he added.
At its peak, the camp housed more than 100,000 people. The numbers dwindled with time, especially after Jordan sealed off its side of the border and stopped regular aid deliveries in 2016.
Around 8,000 people still lived there before Assad’s fall, residing in mud-brick houses, with food and basic supplies smuggled in at high prices.
Syrian minister for emergency situations and disasters Raed Al-Saleh said on X said the camp’s closure represents “the end of one of the harshest humanitarian tragedies faced by our displaced people.”
“We hope this step marks the beginning of a path that ends the suffering of the remaining camps and returns their residents to their homes with dignity and safety,” he added.
According to the International Organization for Migration, 1.87 million Syrians have returned to their places of origin since Assad’s fall, after they were displaced within the country or abroad.
The IOM says the “lack of economic opportunities and essential services pose the greatest challenge” for those returning home.
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Activist aid ship nears Gaza after reaching Egypt coast: organizers

Activist aid ship nears Gaza after reaching Egypt coast: organizers
Updated 07 June 2025
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Activist aid ship nears Gaza after reaching Egypt coast: organizers

Activist aid ship nears Gaza after reaching Egypt coast: organizers
  • The Madleen, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, left Sicily last week with a cargo of relief supplies ‘to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza’

CAIRO: An aid ship with 12 activists on board, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, has reached the Egyptian coast and is nearing the besieged Palestinian territory, organizers said on Saturday.
The Madleen, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, left Sicily last week with a cargo of relief supplies “to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza.”
“We are now sailing off the Egyptian coast,” German human rights activist Yasemin Acar told AFP. “We are all good,” she added.
In a statement from London on Saturday, the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza — a member organization of the flotilla coalition — said the ship had entered Egyptian waters.
The group said it remains in contact with international legal and human rights bodies to ensure the safety of those on board, warning that any interception would constitute “a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
European parliament member Rima Hassan, who is on board the vessel, urged governments to “guarantee safe passage for the Freedom Flotilla.”
The Palestinian territory was under Israeli naval blockade even before the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that sparked the Gaza war and Israel has enforced its blockade with military action in the past.
A 2010 commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a similar aid flotilla trying to breach the blockade, left 10 civilians dead.
In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, reported coming under drone attack while en route for Gaza, prompting Cyprus and Malta to send rescue vessels in response to its distress call. There were no reports of any casualties.
Earlier in its voyage, the Madleen changed course near the Greek island of Crete after receiving a distress signal from a sinking migrant boat.
Activists rescued four Sudanese migrants who had jumped into the sea to avoid being returned to Libya. The four were later transferred to an EU Frontex vessel.
Launched in 2010, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition is a coalition of groups opposed to the blockade on humanitarian aid for Gaza that Israel imposed on March 2 and has only partially eased since.
Israel has faced mounting international condemnation over the resulting humanitarian crisis in the territory, where the United Nations has warned the entire population of more than two million is at risk of famine.


Israel says it has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage kidnapped into Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023

Israel says it has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage kidnapped into Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023
Updated 4 min 46 sec ago
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Israel says it has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage kidnapped into Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023

Israel says it has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage kidnapped into Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023
  • The body of Thai citizen Nattapong Pinta was returned to Israel in a special military operation
  • Pinta was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and killed in captivity near the start of the war

TEL AVIV: Israel says it has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage kidnapped into Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, as it continues its military offensive across the strip, killing at least 95 people in the past 24 hours, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The prime minister’s office said Saturday that the body of Thai citizen Nattapong Pinta was returned to Israel in a special military operation.

Pinta was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and killed in captivity near the start of the war, said the government.

This comes two days after the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages were retrieved. Fifty-five hostages remain in Gaza, of whom Israel says more than half are dead.

The defense minister said Saturday that Pinta’s body was retrieved from the Rafah area. He had come to Israel from Thailand to work in agriculture.

The army said he was taken into Gaza by the Mujahideen Brigades, the small armed group that it said had also abducted and killed Shiri Bibas and her two small children. It’s also the same group that took the two Israeli-American hostages, Judih Weinstein and Gad Haggai, whose bodies were retrieved by the army Thursday.

Israel said it found Pinta’s body based on information received from the hostage task force and military intelligence.

A statement from the hostage forum, which supports the hostages, said it stands with Pinta’s family and shares in their grief. It called on the country’s decision makers to bring home the remaining hostages and give those who have died a proper burial.

Thais were the largest group of foreigners held captive by Hamas militants. Many of the Thai agricultural workers lived in compounds on the outskirts of southern Israeli kibbutzim and towns, and Hamas militants overran those places first. A total of 46 Thais have been killed during the conflict, according to Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Before Pinta’s body was retrieved, three Thai hostages remained in captivity and two were confirmed dead. The fate of Pinta was uncertain until today, according to the hostage forum.

The retrieval of Pinta’s body comes as Israel continues its military campaign across Gaza.

Four strikes hit the Muwasi area in southern Gaza between Rafah and Khan Younis. In northern Gaza, one strike hit an apartment, killing seven people including a mother and five children. Their bodies were taken to Shifa hospital.

Israel said Saturday that it’s responding to Hamas’ “barbaric attacks” and is dismantling its capabilities. It said it follows international law and takes all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack and abducted 251 hostages. They are still holding 55 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages from Gaza and recovered dozens of bodies.

Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The offensive has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of roughly 2 million Palestinians.


Lebanon aims to lure back wealthy Gulf tourists to jumpstart its war-torn economy

Lebanon aims to lure back wealthy Gulf tourists to jumpstart its war-torn economy
Updated 07 June 2025
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Lebanon aims to lure back wealthy Gulf tourists to jumpstart its war-torn economy

Lebanon aims to lure back wealthy Gulf tourists to jumpstart its war-torn economy
  • Lebanon’s new political leaders sense an opportunity to revitalize the economy once again with help from wealthy neighbors

BEIRUT: Fireworks lit up the night sky over Beirut’s famous St. Georges Hotel as hit songs from the 1960s and 70s filled the air in a courtyard overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
The retro-themed event was hosted last month by Lebanon’s Tourism Ministry to promote the upcoming summer season and perhaps recapture some of the good vibes from an era viewed as a golden one for the country. In the years before a civil war began in 1975, Lebanon was the go-to destination for wealthy tourists from neighboring Gulf countries seeking beaches in summer, snow-capped mountains in winter and urban nightlife year-round.
In the decade after the war, tourists from Gulf countries – and crucially, Saudi Arabia – came back, and so did Lebanon’s economy. But by the early 2000s, as the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah gained power, Lebanon’s relations with Gulf countries began to sour. Tourism gradually dried up, starving its economy of billions of dollars in annual spending.
Now, after last year’s bruising war with Israel, Hezbollah is much weaker and Lebanon’s new political leaders sense an opportunity to revitalize the economy once again with help from wealthy neighbors. They aim to disarm Hezbollah and rekindle ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, which in recent years have prohibited their citizens from visiting Lebanon or importing its products.
“Tourism is a big catalyst, and so it’s very important that the bans get lifted,” said Laura Khazen Lahoud, the country’s tourism minister.
On the highway leading to the Beirut airport, once-ubiquitous banners touting Hezbollah’s leadership have been replaced with commercial billboards and posters that read “a new era for Lebanon.” In the center of Beirut, and especially in neighborhoods that hope to attract tourists, political posters are coming down, and police and army patrols are on the rise.
There are signs of thawing relations with some Gulf neighbors. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have lifted yearslong travel bans.
All eyes are now on Saudi Arabia, a regional political and economic powerhouse, to see if it will follow suit, according to Lahoud and other Lebanese officials. A key sticking point is security, these officials say. Although a ceasefire with Israel has been in place since November, near-daily airstrikes have continued in southern and eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah over the years had built its political base and powerful military arsenal.
Tourism as a diplomatic and economic bridge
As vital as tourism is — it accounted for almost 20 percent of Lebanon’s economy before it tanked in 2019 — the country’s leaders say it is just one piece of a larger puzzle they are trying to put back together.
Lebanon’s agricultural and industrial sectors are in shambles, suffering a major blow in 2021, when Saudi Arabia banned their exports after accusing Hezbollah of smuggling drugs into Riyadh. Years of economic dysfunction have left the country’s once-thriving middle class in a state of desperation.
The World Bank says poverty nearly tripled in Lebanon over the past decade, affecting close to half its population of nearly 6 million. To make matters worse, inflation is soaring, with the Lebanese pound losing 90 percent of its value, and many families lost their savings when banks collapsed.
Tourism is seen by Lebanon’s leaders as the best way to kickstart the reconciliation needed with Gulf countries — and only then can they move on to exports and other economic growth opportunities.
“It’s the thing that makes most sense, because that’s all Lebanon can sell now,” said Sami Zoughaib, research manager at The Policy Initiative, a Beirut-based think tank.
With summer still weeks away, flights to Lebanon are already packed with expats and locals from countries that overturned their travel bans, and hotels say bookings have been brisk.
At the event hosted last month by the tourism ministry, the owner of the St. Georges Hotel, Fady El-Khoury, beamed. The hotel, owned by his father in its heyday, has acutely felt Lebanon’s ups and downs over the decades, closing and reopening multiple times because of wars. “I have a feeling that the country is coming back after 50 years,” he said.
On a recent weekend, as people crammed the beaches of the northern city of Batroun, and jet skis whizzed along the Mediterranean, local business people sounded optimistic that the country was on the right path.
“We are happy, and everyone here is happy,” said Jad Nasr, co-owner of a private beach club. “After years of being boycotted by the Arabs and our brothers in the Gulf, we expect this year for us to always be full.”
Still, tourism is not a panacea for Lebanon’s economy, which for decades has suffered from rampant corruption and waste.
Lebanon has been in talks with the International Monetary Fund for years over a recovery plan that would include billions in loans and require the country to combat corruption, restructure its banks, and bring improvements to a range of public services, including electricity and water.
Without those and other reforms, Lebanon’s wealthy neighbors will lack confidence to invest there, experts said. A tourism boom alone would serve as a “morphine shot that would only temporarily ease the pain” rather than stop the deepening poverty in Lebanon, Zoughaib said.
The tourism minister, Lahoud, agreed, saying a long-term process has only just begun.
“But we’re talking about subjects we never talked about before,” she said. “And I think the whole country has realized that war doesn’t serve anyone, and that we really need our economy to be back and flourish again.”


US mulls giving millions to controversial Gaza aid foundation, sources say

US mulls giving millions to controversial Gaza aid foundation, sources say
Updated 07 June 2025
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US mulls giving millions to controversial Gaza aid foundation, sources say

US mulls giving millions to controversial Gaza aid foundation, sources say
  • The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said

WASHINGTON: The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established UN aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
Gaza hospital officials have said more than 80 people had been shot dead and hundreds wounded near GHF’s distribution points between June 1-3.
Since launching its operation, the GHF has opened three hubs, but over the past two days, only two of them have been functioning.
Witnesses blamed Israeli soldiers for the killings. The Israeli military said it fired warning shots on two days, while on Tuesday it said soldiers had fired at Palestinian “suspects” advancing toward their positions.