For months, Israel has faced a relentless barrage of criticism over its conduct in Gaza – from western governments, UN agencies, and media outlets that once claimed to be her allies. Central to the condemnation are the humanitarian circumstances: civilian suffering, limited aid access, and Israel’s temporary obstruction of some relief efforts. What has gone largely unreported, however, is that the bold new strategy in place may now be altering that equation entirely – a direct aid delivery mechanism, led by American contractors, that is not only reaching civilians more effectively but also weakening Hamas from within. You would never have guessed from the way some world leaders have condemned it.
For years, aid to Gaza flowed through Hamas-linked channels. The results were predictable. Supplies were diverted, skimmed, taxed, or hoarded by Hamas and resold at inflated prices. The very system intended to alleviate suffering ended up financing the terror group’s entrenchment and violence. According to Israeli journalist Amit Segal, Hamas made roughly one billion shekels – approximately $274 million or £215 million – from humanitarian aid in the first few months of the war, when international pressure forced Israel to allow supplies through Hamas-controlled networks. This sustained its ability to wage war even as its fighters were being decimated in the field.
This paradox had far-reaching consequences. While Israel was eliminating Hamas battalions, it was also being pressured – particularly by the Biden administration – to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza through Hamas-controlled networks. The White House throttled arms transfers unless Israel complied, and humanitarianism became a lever of coercion that prolonged the war by helping Hamas maintain its grip.
This was always clear for all to see: during ceasefires, up to 600 aid trucks entered Gaza daily, yet the prices of basic goods continued to climb. Far from easing scarcity, the influx allowed Hamas to manipulate the economy and further exploit its population. Under normal conditions, abundance reduces prices. In Gaza, abundance was turned into a racket.
That is what makes the new model so significant. Under this system, designed and implemented with American oversight, aid is distributed independently of Hamas. In the first 48 hours alone, six million meals were reportedly provided through just three of eight planned distribution centres. Prices dropped by an estimated 35 per cent. Food aid is being distribute properly, for free, for the first time since the conflict began. Hamas meanwhile has not paid its fighters for months, and its grip on the streets appears to be slipping.
Within days, some Gazans began storming Hamas storage sites, with several being shot and killed by the terrorists in response. Public anger spilled into view. In one widely shared video, a Gazan man offers a searing indictment:
All of Gaza took food. Hamas tells us not to go to the Americans. May the Americans be blessed – they give us flour and food. Osama Hamdan is in Qatar – he’s full and goes to sleep with air conditioning… and he tells us to stand firm. Hamas, surrender and get out of here! Look at what Hamas has brought us to. Bless Trump. Trump is feeding us while Hamas is starving us. Thank you, Trump. Osama Hamdan, come here, sit with us, starve with us, die with us. Osama Hamdan, we want the war to stop. Those who are negotiating on our behalf have no idea what we’re going through. They’re eating kebab and lamb and have no sense of what’s happening to the starving people of Gaza.
These rare glimpses into how Hamas is losing the confidence of the population it claims to represent should not be ignored. If the new aid model continues to prove successful, it will do more than feed civilians. It could finally fracture Hamas’s hold on power and accelerate the end of the war on terms that at least don’t guarantee future violence.
And yet, the very agencies tasked with helping Gazans – most notably elements of the United Nations – have opposed this shift. They claim it undermines established procedures. But what those procedures preserved was a Hamas-managed economy in which aid was bartered for loyalty. Their resistance appears less about humanitarian outcomes than about defending institutional turf and relationships with a regime that enabled their access. They are acting like a mafia, displaying a brazen disregard both for Israel’s security and the welfare of people in Gaza.
The international community must ask itself: should humanitarian aid serve civilians or entrench terrorists? The old model left that question unanswered. The new one makes its priorities clear.
Still, none of this guarantees a swift or clean end to the conflict. There are many variables and possible outcomes. Hamas still holds dozens of Israeli hostages and has little incentive to release them all. Israel must resist ever more shrill demands for a so-called ceasefire if its terms would leave the jihadist Islamic terror group Hamas in place to rearm, regroup, and repeat the cycle. Hamas has rejected the offer anyway, even when some consider it a de facto surrender to the Palestinian terrorists. And the hostages are Hamas’s last line of leverage. They will not relinquish them all willingly. Any pause that halts Israeli momentum without dismantling Hamas risks freezing the conflict in place, as has happened repeatedly for decades, condemning the region to endless future wars.
Israel now faces a brutal choice. It can yield to a manufactured global outcry – or it can stay the course. That will mean withstanding a torrent of diplomatic pressure, media hostility, and moral posturing from capitals far removed from the battlefield. But if this strategy continues to work – if it truly fractures Hamas’s power – then Israel must endure the opprobrium, however bitter. The hysteria may eventually pass, giving way to a more sober acceptance of a new, pragmatic balance of power, security, and dignity. The alternative is not peace. It is paralysis.
The long-term beneficiaries of Hamas’s defeat will not only be Israelis, but potentially Palestinians as well. A Gaza no longer held hostage by jihadist rule could finally begin the long journey toward recovery, accountability, and perhaps one day, a different future.
That outcome is not assured. But for the first time in years, it appears possible.
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