How can a private person participate in food-aid to the Palestinians at this time? A necessary condition is making sure that the donation indeed goes to food only.
Please explain how it is possible to verify that the donation goes to food only.
Question by an Israeli Jew.
Note: WCK has currently suspended operations within Gaza in response to the Israeli strike on the humanitarian convoy that killed all the members of their team. I am not sure if the suspension is permanent enough to be worth removing the answer.
World Central Kitchen opened a Welcome Center in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza to help the Palestinians fleeing south in search of safety. Hundreds of people cross the checkpoint from north to south each day to escape relentless bombardment and lack of food. WCK is simultaneously providing as much aid as possible in northern Gaza and supporting displaced people who come through they Welcome Center.
This organization, founded by the celebrity Spanish chef has served more than 32 million meals in Gaza, and he hopes to do more (The New York Times).
They are ready to accept the donations. They are really focused on food.
The most reliable international agency to donate money for Palestinians is the United Nations. The UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency created to specifically help palestine refugees. You can donate to them online - https://donate.unrwa.org/
Since the Palestinians are facing starvation in Gaza the UNRWA funds are obviously being prioritised to prevent starvation deaths. The donation page even specifically highlights this: "Give now and provide vital food and cash assistance to thousands of families in dire need."
With more than 1.7 million Palestinians displaced, many of them multiple times, the need for food and non-food items is a weight shouldered by UNRWA, the backbone of the humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip. Many rely on the Agency’s food aid for their survival. With the risk of famine increasing with every passing day of hostilities, continued access restrictions threaten millions of lives. “They have nothing in their tents. The warehouses are largely emptied of aid,” confirms Mahmoud.
... the UNRWA Supply Department has been able to provide a varied food basket containing milk and nutritional supplements for children,” Mahmoud notes. The food parcels also include lentils, rice, various canned goods, sweets, and dates. “These are the food items remaining in our stores. They are repackaged as a food parcel and distributed to approximately 8,500 displaced families inside the Tal al-Sultan shelter centre in Rafah,” he said. To date, some 374,800 families have been assisted by UNRWA food distribution, with approximately 164,082 of them receiving two rounds of flour distributions.
Source: #UNRWAWorks. Frontline heroes: The Race Against the Clock to Avert Famine
Due to the international mandate they have from the UN to protect Palestinians, they have been very active in Gaza for a long time now to alleviate their suffering:
The Gaza Strip has a population of approximately 2.1 million people, including some 1.7 million Palestine Refugees. For at least the last decade and a half, the socioeconomic situation in Gaza has been in steady decline. A blockade on land, air and sea was imposed by Israel following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. There are now very few options left for the people of Gaza, who have been living under collective punishment as a result of the blockade that continues to have a devastating effect as people’s movement to and from the Gaza Strip, as well as access to markets, remains severely restricted.
... Food security in Gaza has deteriorated with 63 per cent of people in the Gaza Strip being food insecure and dependent on international assistance ... With 81.5 per cent of the population living in poverty, an overall unemployment rate of 46.6 per cent (48.1 per cent for Palestine Refugees living in the camps) at the end of the third quarter of 2022 and an unemployment rate of 62.3 per cent among youth (15-29 years, refugees and non-refugees), the already fragile humanitarian situation in Gaza threatens to deteriorate further ... Clean water is unavailable for 95 per cent of the population.
Source: UNRWA - Where we work
Israel deliberately targets UNRWA workers and camps because some of them are Palestinians and so some obviously support the resistance against Israel, for which the Israeli-right prefers to call them terrorists:
152 UNRWA staff have already been killed and 145 UNRWA facilities damaged by bombardment. UNRWA is the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza and their delivery of humanitarian assistance cannot be replaced by other agencies working in Gaza. If the funding suspensions are not reversed we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza.
With approximately over one million displaced Palestinians taking shelter in or around 154 UNRWA shelters, the agency and aid organisations have continued to work in near impossible circumstances to provide food, vaccinations, and freshwater. The countries suspending funds risk further depriving Palestinians in the region of essential food, water, medical assistance and supplies, education and protection.
Source: UNRWA funding cuts threaten Palestinian lives in Gaza and region, say NGOs
The WFP also accepts direct (money) donations from individual donors.
TBH, I'm not sure it's possible to donate either to this or to "World Central Kitchen" and ensure your donation goes only to [food for] Gaza, since they run world-wide programs.
FWTW, WCK claims to serve around 350,000 meals per day in Gaza. The WPF around 300,000 it seems, but that probably doesn't include parcels. BTW, although the 200-ton ship made headlines, WCK shipped most of their food by truck from Egypt -- around 1,600 of them to date. That page also says the WCK serves around 170,000 hot meals per day in Gaza. Somewhere in the fine print, WCK partners with Anera for the local activities in Gaza. The latter is a US-registered charity as well, but they're focused on Palestinians. Anera does more than food themselves though, so if you dislike that, don't give to them directly. The Israeli press criticized Anera for not condemning Hamas, so there's that too.
Actually, since 2022 (and possibly earlier), the WFP claims to allow small-share donors to direct their contributions to specific zones, through the Share-the-meal app. (N.B. ShareTheMeal has been around since around 2014-2015, when the WFP resorted to them because they faced a severe shortage in governments-provided funding for the Syrian refugees aid.) OTOH, besides being under the UN aegis, which some Israelis might find objectionable in itself, WFP also gives a non-trivial amount as cash assistance rather than just food. Their (logistics) overhead is also larger than that of other organizations (around 1/3--the WFP personnel overhead though is only around 14% though), enough that the CharityWatch doesn't list the WFP, unlike the WCK. (They only list orgs with less than 25% overhead.) You can also look at the latter list for other ideas/orgs, but most that operate in the region aren't food-only.
