Israeli businessmen and members of the IDF reserves are involved in the mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, the New York Times said on Sunday in an investigative report. According to the Times, the initiative was proposed in order to circumvent the UN, which was seen as having an anti-Israel bias.
The members of the reserves served in the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) under the command of Brig. Gen. Roman Gofman, who later became the military secretary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The New York Times wrote that rather than tasking the delivery of aid to organizations such as the UN, which have experience in the field, Israel decided to hand the responsibility over to private organizations that were recently established, and whose backgrounds are unclear and the source of their funding, unknown. This, despite claims that this was a neutral and independent initiative that would be administered by American contractors.
Safe Reach Solutions, the company that was named as leading the delivery operation is headed by " Philip F. Reilly, a former senior C.I.A. officer, and a fund-raising group is headed by Jake Wood, a former U.S. Marine, who said in an interview that the system would be phased in soon," the Times wrote.
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According to the report, the plan was first discussed in December 2023 to ensure that humanitarian aid would not reach the hands of Hamas, which has used it to hold on to its power in Gaza and to fund its military operations.
The UN opposed such an initiative that would restrict delivery of food to only limited areas in the Strip and could endanger the lives of civilians who would have to travel a long way, through IDF lines, to reach it. " The U.N. also warns that the system could facilitate an Israeli plan to displace civilians out of northern Gaza, since the initial distribution sites would only be in the south," The Times wrote.
Among the initiators of Israel's aid delivery mechanism were Yotam HaCohen, a strategic consultant who joined COGAT, Liran Tancman, a well-connected tech investor who also joined COGAT; and Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli-American venture capitalist.