“They will never give me a Nobel peace prize,” he sulked during a meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval Office this year. “It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”
What Trump’s New Chief of Gaza Aid Means for US Foreign Policy
On the eve of the US election, Donald Trump addressed a rally of evangelical Christians in the swing state of Georgia. Among the pastors invited to whip up the crowd was the Rev Johnnie Moore.
A Maga loyalist, Moore told the Atlanta congregation that it was their religious duty to vote for Trump. “When you vote — and when you take everyone you know to vote — remember your vote is an act of love on behalf of your family and future generations,” he said.
Moore, 41, was a frequent visitor to the White House during Trump’s first administration and a strong supporter of Israel. A faith adviser to Trump, he attended a prayer session in the Oval Office and successfully lobbied the president to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
This week, the preacher — whose day job is as a PR executive — was appointed head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
His predecessor, Jake Wood, a US army veteran, resigned last week with an attack on the foundation’s lack of “humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence”. Subsequent events have only raised further questions.
The shadowy agency initially promised to bring relief to 2.1 million Palestinians threatened with famine after an 80-day blockade of food, fuel and medicine. Instead, 110 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers at GHF aid distribution sites since the group started disbursing food last week, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The GHF claims it is operationally independent from the US and Israeli governments. But Moore’s appointment has prompted questions about the organisation’s opaque ownership — it is registered in the tax havens of Delaware and Geneva — and its ties to Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
The foundation appears to be heavily influenced by a plan originally presented to Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, Israel’s top foreign affairs adviser, by a group of former US policymakers in January last year.
The group’s chairman was John Hannah, a former national security adviser to Dick Cheney, vice-president in the George W Bush administration.
Hannah said the original plan envisioned the creation of a private non-profit entity — a “super NGO” — to disburse aid to Palestinian civilians using American security contractors while allowing the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to continue their war on Hamas.
The current scheme relies on contractors working for two companies — UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions — who are reported to receive up to $1,100 a day, on top of a signing-on bonus of $10,000, to supervise handouts.
“You’ve got this huge private industry that’s developed over the last 20 years during the war on terror,” Hannah said. “There’s a lot of retired US military, mostly special forces, some with Arabic language skills, and experience securing convoys, warehouses, distribution points, protecting VIPs, and critical infrastructure. Those are the missions these guys can do.”
However, Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a Washington-based think tank, said the original plan imagined aid deliveries starting early last year with the buy-in of Arab countries and NGOs.
Instead, he said that a bungled rollout had fed a narrative that the GHF was an arm of the Israeli government and illegitimate — even Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader, has accused Netanyahu of using “shell companies” as a front to disguise the government’s involvement. A “lack of transparency” over where the money was coming from was a serious problem, Hannah said.
“There’s no doubt there’s been hiccups,” he added. “But the mission is good. Nobody should want Hamas to continue to get access to humanitarian assistance, to gain revenues and recruit new fighters.
“If I was a humanitarian aid group and I had a choice of working with Israel or working on behalf of a system that has allowed for a diversion of international aid on a cosmic scale over the last 16 to 17 years to build hundreds of miles of terror tunnels right under their noses, then I would acknowledge the existing system has serious problems and needs dramatic reform.”
The deadly incident in Gaza on Tuesday provoked international condemnation as well as a host of allegations and counter-allegations. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, denounced the “fake news BBC” for reporting statistics from the Hamas-run government. The BBC said Leavitt’s criticism was “completely wrong”.
The deaths led to the temporary suspension of aid deliveries to desperate Gazans and prompted the Boston Consulting Group, a US management consultancy, to terminate its contract with the GHF, seemingly due to the reputational risks. The IDF warned that the roads approaching the distribution centres would be considered “combat zones”.
Despite the insistence that the GHF is operating “effectively”, there has been further confusion since. On Friday, the GHF initially said its sites were closed, then later claimed it had distributed aid. Meanwhile, 16 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. Israel said four of its soldiers had been killed in combat in the Strip.
Moore has struck a combative tone since taking over as executive director of the organisation, claiming that Gazans “spontaneously thanked America and President Donald Trump” for the trickle of food that entered the territory. “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation isn’t perfect,” Moore wrote on Fox News.“But it is honest.”
Like others involved in Trump’s Israel diplomacy, the preacher comes from a tradition of Christian Zionism that dates back to America’s founding fathers. “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation,” said John Adams, the second US president, in 1819, after leaving office.
Many American evangelicals believe the second coming of Jesus is possible only if Jews are returned to the Holy Land. The US ambassador to Israel, Mick Huckabee, has explained that his Baptist faith drives his strongly pro-Israel views. “I believe those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed,” the former governor of Arkansas has said.
Yet for all the religious zeal of American diplomacy, peace in Gaza remains elusive. Hamas has rejected any ceasefire proposal that does not include the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The longer the war continues, the more difficult appear Trump’s signature foreign policy aims in the Middle East — to secure a nuclear deal on Iran that goes beyond the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action abandoned in 2018 and to expand the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabian recognition of Israel.
Unique in so many ways, Trump nevertheless resembles many former occupants of the White House in his apparent determination to go down in history as the president who fixed the Middle East — and the accolades that would entail.
Originally published in The Times.