U.S. State Department documents confirm that Hamas is targeting Gaza Humanitarian Foundation personnel through a campaign of bounties and violence, The Washington Beacon reported Monday.
A June 30 cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem states that the terrorist group has “formally placed bounties” on U.S. and Palestinian workers of GHF, a joint U.S.-Israeli aid effort formed in February to replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The bounties imperil “Palestinian workers and the U.S. security contractors helping to protect the GHF distribution sites,” the cable, marked “sensitive but unclassified,” reads, according to the Free Beacon’s report.
Last month, the foundation warned that its employees were being targeted.
“We are aware of credible reports that Hamas is openly targeting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and those who work with us,” the U.S.-backed aid organization said on June 28. “According to these reports, Hamas has placed bounties on both our American security personnel and Palestinian aid workers—offering cash rewards to anyone who injures or kills them.”
The foundation further alleged that Hamas had positioned armed terrorists near humanitarian zones, in a deliberate effort to disrupt what GHF describes as the “only functioning aid delivery system in Gaza.” The group said that 12 members of its local staff have already been killed and others tortured in recent weeks, with threats intensifying by the day.
The State Department cable also confirmed that Hamas “made a recent demand that any ceasefire deal in Gaza must end GHF’s operations and return to the prior process of distributing assistance in Gaza to Hamas’s benefit,” the report said. Israeli and U.S. officials are opposing this.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C., for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump about peace efforts, including vis-à-vis Hamas in Gaza. Its terrorists currently hold 50 Israeli hostages, of whom 20 are believed to be alive. An Israeli delegation is in Qatar for indirect talks with Hamas on a deal for the hostages’ release.
Hamas terrorists abducted those hostages and 201 others on Oct. 7, 2023, during an invasion of Israel in which they killed some 1,200 people and wounded thousands more. The invasion prompted an ongoing Israeli military campaign to dismantle Hamas and retrieve the hostages.
The fighting triggered armed conflicts with Hezbollah, which attacked Israel on Oct. 8, 2023. It suffered major losses that forced it to accept a ceasefire in November 2024.
On Monday, the GHF said it has provided nearly 64 million meals via roughly 1.1 million boxes since it became operational in May.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the GHF’s operation, which was launched despite U.N. opposition, “a turning point in the war that will lead, G-d willing, to victory and Hamas’s destruction.”
Yet, shooting incidents, some likely staged by Hamas, near GHF facilities have served as propaganda tools against the organization. Additionally, Hamas has published images of its forces handing out food to many residents also after GHF became operational, making critics doubt its effectiveness in diminishing Hamas’s control of the population of Gaza through its dispensation of resources to them.
