Israel weighs use of private security contractors to deliver Gaza aid

Israel is weighing the use of private security contractors - possibly involving UK special forces veterans - to deliver aid to Gaza, as conditions in the north of the strip worsen dramatically, the Guardian has learned.

- Julian Borger Bethan McKernan

According to an Israeli official, the security cabinet discussed the issue on Sunday, before an expected vote in the Knesset next week on two bills that would ban the UN relief agency, Unrwa, from operating in Israel. If passed, the bills would cripple the operations of by far the biggest aid supplier in Gaza.

After more than a year of bombardment, all form of law and order has collapsed in Gaza, where the population is desperate and armed gangs run much of what is left of its urban areas.

Security threats are a major obstacle to aid deliveries, including the threat of attack by Israeli forces. Aid agencies have resisted being part of militarised convoys, state or privately run, for fear of being targeted as being party to the conflict.

"There's a reason that humanitarians don't operate this way," said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration, now president of Refugees International. "The US, during the peak 'war on terror' era, occasionally experimented with military contractors and this kind of militarised aid delivery, and it was always a disaster." He added: "US-funded contractors that took an armed security approach got hit a lot because they were seen as combatants."

Mordechai ("Moti") Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman whose Global Delivery Company (GDC) is bidding for the Gaza aid delivery contract, said that the cabinet did not formally make a decision on Sunday, on the grounds that it was up to the defence ministry and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).