Former UK commander praises GHF’s aid efforts in rare inaugural visit to site - interview

Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan during part of a period of time when the US, UK, and their allies were trying to engage in nation-building in that country, has seen a lot.

Next, he said, “The citizens were allowed in and collected their aid. Most of the interactions between the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and people getting aid is through local employees, Palestinians working for the GHF.

“There is pretty limited interaction between the mainly American staff” and the Palestinian civilians, as the Americans are focused mainly on “security and the [background] logistics of running the place,” he stated.

Moreover, he noted that “the benefit” of having mostly Palestinian employees handling the Palestinian civilians directly is that “they speak the same language.”

He said he was told an estimated 20,000 Palestinians arrived during the two-hour period. During that time, there was “absolutely no tension at all” between the GHF and the Palestinians.

But he said the GHF staff stood back and let this play out without intervening, explaining, “The last thing the GHF wants to do is cause tension between their staff and the aid recipients by trying to overly control the situation.

Inevitably, everyone wants the same thing” meaning to get to the food first, so this led to the scramble.

Pressed that a scramble sounded potentially violent, he stated, “No one is getting knocked down, there were no injuries that I saw, though I couldn’t observe everything” that happened throughout the facility.

“Aid is stacked up row by row in a compound, with 20,000 people, around 1,000 coming in,” at a time, leading to “a bit of jostling” but nothing too problematic.

Next, he said, “There was no tension. I spoke to many Gazans while this was going on, some who had collected their aid and were waiting to leave.

“There was an interpreter with me, for some [talks] there was interpreting, but there were some Gazans who could speak English a bit,” noted Kemp.

He said that a small number of Palestinians were “disgruntled because a lot of it [the food] had gone, or there was not enough or not everything [every specific food item] they wanted. A few people weren’t that happy, but the vast majority were extremely happy.”

Some of the Palestinians wanted to “show me what they got. In many cases, they took the aid out of the cardboard boxes. They took what they wanted to put it into empty plastic UN aid sacks. Many of them seemed to have been there before.

“Essentially, they took out what they wanted the most from the boxes, so they would not need to carry the heavy box. Some do still carry the heavy box, which is the plan,” he said.

Many of them asked, “When is the next delivery going to be?”

Surprisingly, several of them said, “I love America and I love [US President Donald] Trump. Others said, “Kill Hamas, Hamas out.”

Curiously, Kemp said that even after collecting their food, some Palestinians “didn’t rush away. There is not a lot else to be doing for them,” and they might stay for the whole two hours of food distribution.

Eventually, local Palestinian employees would encourage them to leave using loudspeakers, he stated.

Others “would come quickly, take what they wanted in around 15 minutes... with young kids sprinting down... the food lanes and then leave.”

“I didn’t see the IDF [up close] since the entrance to the food compound was controlled by the GHF and their own security teams,” he explained.

Kemp said he was able to take a side entrance into the square compound with the GHF vehicles to avoid the screening at the IDF checkpoint.

Despite the numerous incidents reported in the global media about mass shootings of Palestinian around or on their way to GHF sites – reports that GHF say are either invented or Hamas propaganda about altercations between the IDF and Palestinians away from GHF sites – the Palestinians he spoke to had “no apprehension whatsoever” of being shot by IDF or GHF security guards.

“If there have been incidents of shooting near the GHF locations, this didn’t deter them from coming and getting aid this time,” he added.

Kemp said he also spoke to the local Palestinian employees working with GHF.

“They were saying Hamas really hates the GHF sites, and they threaten people not to use them. They hate them because they want to get their hands on the aid themselves, and not to have an external entity controlling the aid,” he said.

Next, he said he spoke to around 15 of these Palestinian employees, with all of them “fearing for their own lives, if they were identified as cooperating with GHF.” As such, “their faces were covered when in proximity to people coming to collect the aid.”

Speaking to the GHF American staff, he said that they acknowledged that they were still at early stages, only running for a month, and that a few things weren’t right regarding the geometric setup of the place and the logistics when they had first opened. But over time, and given some changes, things have been improving, he was told.

He did note that some GHF personnel who had served at some other locations mentioned some incidents where there were tensions earlier on.

Pressed what he and they meant by “tensions,” he said that some GHF security personnel mentioned inter-Palestinian crowd violence, with some Palestinian civilians coming with knives, but noting there still had not been violence between the Gazans and the GHF. He said most of the incidents he heard about were Gazans fighting over aid.

Kemp said that all four GHF sites have adjusted their procedures to minimize tension. He reiterated that the American GHF staff do not want incidents between them and the Gazans.

“The whole thing is loosely controlled. The Palestinian civilians are held back by the IDF until it is time to open up, then they are left to their own devices, approaching the lines and the aid boxes.”

Questioned about an incident in which the GHF allegedly fired in the air to get Palestinian crowds to back off who had breached or were trying to breach defense lines for the facility, Kemp said he did not hear about such an incident.

In addition, Kemp did get to meet with GHF managers in their operations center, which controls the sites.

“They briefed me about how it works, where the aid comes from, how it gets into Gaza.

“They are pretty frustrated that the UN has refused to cooperate with them, and also that there is so much bad press, which they think is unwarranted,” he said.

Further, he stated that the GHF managers thought “the UN ought to be cooperating with them, combine efforts, and then aid could be much more efficiently delivered.

“I agree with that. It is a really big mistake that the UN and other aid agencies won’t cooperate with GHF. The whole thing could be much more comprehensive,” said Kemp.

Questioned about what would be more efficient and comprehensive if the UN and standard aid groups worked with the GHF, he responded, “Better funding, greater provision of aid. It could make a big difference. It doesn’t help GHF for there to be such opposition at the UN.”

He noted that it is “privately funded, and they need the funds, and some people are put off from some of the stories coming out,” if the GHF wanted to increase its donor base.

Asked about the multiple GHF managers who quit in very public ways with criticism of the organization, Kemp said he had not discussed this with the current GHF managers, but that his impression was that none of this had impacted the GHF’s ability to operate the four sites.

Speculating, he stated that possibly such public quitting of people at the top could “maybe undermine contributions to the aid.”

Pressed about what the GHF would do if the UN maintained its boycott, he said that both “the – management and the lower level staff were extremely committed to this project. These people actually do want to help. I don’t know how much they get paid, but they have long hours and are working under difficult circumstances. They are mostly ex-military. They do it for the good of the people in Gaza.”

This is a major issue regarding GHF’s longevity and staying power.

Reports have indicated that some mix of the Israeli government, US government, and select pro-Israel donors are funding the GHF behind the scenes, with both the government and the IDF persistently refusing to discuss the financing issue.

Politically, many right-wing Israelis would be opposed to Israel funding Gazan aid as opposed to the aid being funded by the UN or by Arab states.

Next, Kemp contended, “A lot of people didn’t get aid before GHF was set up... or they couldn’t get aid for free.” He meant even when UN aid was being allowed in by the IDF before early March.

“The only way they could get aid was by buying it at the local market from Hamas, [which] was selling the aid,” he stated.

This last statement has been confirmed to the Post by several top-level IDF officials.

Kemp said the GHF project is important and that even if it is not yet feeding all of Gaza – it does not yet have a northern Gaza facility – “quite a lot of them [Palestinians] are” receiving food aid from GHF now.

“The GHF is able to expand operations, number of bases, and amount of food; [I] read a lot about this operation.