By Sam Sokol
and Nava Freiberg
26 May 2025, 5:17 pm
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accuses the government of secretly funding humanitarian aid for Gaza through two foreign “shell companies,” an assertion quickly denied by the Prime Minister’s Office.
“Our job is to ask the government tough questions, and with such a question I take the podium today: Is the State of Israel behind two shell companies established in Switzerland and the United States, GHF and SRS, to organize and finance humanitarian aid in Gaza?” Lapid asks from the Knesset rostrum ahead of a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s office confirmed this morning that the distribution of assistance under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) had begun, launching a system that Israel says is meant to keep aid from being diverted to the Hamas terror group.
While technically an American company, GHF was established in close coordination with Israeli authorities. Aid groups and the UN have refused to cooperate with the new initiative, saying it would create even more displacement of the Palestinian population, fail to meet local needs, and violate humanitarian principles that prohibit a warring party from controlling humanitarian assistance.
GHF has published a 14-page document detailing its distribution plan, including the names of those leading the project. Two American companies, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, were selected to serve as onsite contractors.
According to The New York Times, the project wasn’t simply built in coordination with Israel, but is “an Israeli brainchild” proposed during a 2023 meeting of “like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government.”
According to a separate Haaretz report published yesterday, SRS entered Gaza without security clearance from the Shin Bet, as is the procedure.
“Could it be that the Israeli security services were sent by the prime minister and the finance minister to move Israeli funds abroad, so that they would return to Gaza as humanitarian aid?” Lapid asks, noting that GHF CEO Jake Wood resigned yesterday. Wood said it is “clear that this program cannot be implemented while strictly adhering to the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.”
“The important word here is ‘independence,'” Lapid states. “Jake Wood understood that he was being played. The big question is whether we are not being played too. If this money is Israeli, if it comes from the state treasury, the State of Israel should not and cannot hide it.”
To hide the source of the money would constitute a “fraud” against the Israeli people and “one of the greatest acts of political folly in the history of the state,” he continues.
“If our tax money is buying humanitarian aid, financing food and medicine for children in Gaza, let’s profit from it in the international arena” by announcing it, he says.
“The Israeli government should have some dignity, say out loud that it funds these two organizations, and do the thing it hates to do the most: take responsibility for the things it does, and bear the consequences.”
In a swift reaction, Netanyahu spokesperson Omer Dostri says: “Israel does not fund the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip. Israel and the United States are working in full coordination and through various channels to cut off aid from reaching Hamas.”
Source : https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/lapid-suggests-israel-funding-foreign-shell-companies-distributing-gaza-aid-pm-spokesperson-denies/
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