‘Damn, boy, I think you got one’: inside Gaza’s deadly aid distribution centres

The former Green Beret, a 25-year veteran of US special forces, was authorised to kill if he felt his safety was threatened, but said that he had barely been briefed before joining a security force intended to support the efforts of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) effort to deliver aid to a starving population.

The recruiter was from UG Solutions, a company that Aguilar had never heard of until he got that phone call last May. Still, he wanted to help, and was recruited along with 450 other contractors.

Aguilar did not know it yet, but his fellow contractors included members of an Islamophobic biker gang covered in tattoos of imagery and dates honouring the Crusades of the middle ages. One member of the Infidels Motorcycle Club was even promoted to a managerial position on site.

“When I decided to say yes to this, other military officers I’ve known for decades and some of my closest friends were like... ‘What are you doing? It’s poorly planned. It’s not well executed.’ But I felt that I wanted to be part of the mission, of providing aid and relief to people that were in need,” said Aguilar, speaking to The Observer for a podcast investigation into the lethal system of aid distribution in Gaza.

Aguilar was told that UG Solutions was looking for recent veterans with a background in special operations – an unusual requirement for a supposed aid mission. In interviews, he was asked when he last fired a weapon, but said the company did little to verify what he told them.

UG Solutions denied this and said its recruits are subject to rigorous checks and training before deployment. “We do not hire amateurs and we do not compromise on readiness or responsibility,” it said.

Within a few days of that first phone call, Aguilar was at Dulles airport in Washington DC with the other recruits. There was no proper briefing to outline the mission, the terrain and the mood, he said. “It was like... just a bro session. Questions weren’t really answered – it was very informal.”

Former Green Beret Jameson Govoni, the founder and chief executive of UG Solutions, got on stage to tell them: “We’re answering the call that nobody else will,” promising them that the trip would be lucrative and exciting. Govoni disputed Aguilar’s account and said the talk was meant to be encouraging.

The group was there to secure distribution points run by the GHF, intended to deliver aid to starving people in Gaza in the months after a full Israeli blockade shut down much of the UN’s work in the enclave.

The project quickly proved deadly. Within two months of its launch, 859 Palestinians were shot in proximity to GHF’s four distribution centres across Gaza, according to the UN.

While Israeli forces are believed to be responsible for the majority of shootings close to GHF’s distribution sites, questions remain about why an effort that is supposed to be about feeding the hungry has resulted in so many deaths.

The Israel Defense Forces said it “categorically rejects claims of intentional harm”, that its troops operate according to international law and that any reported violations are investigated. But the results of these investigations are not made public.

Two years into Israel’s longest war, humanitarians fear that the GHF represents a new model of risky aid delivery that threatens to stay in place as part of Donald Trump’s proposal for Gaza’s future.

Aguilar shot footage from GHF’s distribution points that shows the chaos of aid delivery, with drones and gunfire audible as young men run to grab frantically at boxes of food.

In another video, a UG Solutions contractor points his gun squarely at a group of unarmed Palestinians approaching an aid distribution point after it closed.

In a third, a contractor fires teargas at close range at a small group of Palestinians who are leaving a site.

In late May, Aguilar filmed one of the UG Solutions contractors “shooting at an unarmed crowd of civilians who not only were unarmed and not a threat, but were actually walking away from us. Their backs turned to us as they walked away from the site, carrying their bags or their boxes of food, and he’s shooting into the crowd.”

In the video, the contractor then cheered. A contractor nearby added: “Damn, boy, I think you got one.”

UG Solutions denied that the contractor in the video fired into a crowd and said he was instead reacting “wildly inappropriately to Israeli military activity nearby before being sent home hours later”.

It also said it has since trained its contractors on humanitarian operations and norms, but would not share any of the training materials.

The involvement of members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club raises questions about whether these incidents are ultimately a result of ideology. Members said the biker gang was founded by US veterans in 2015 in opposition to “radical jihadism” and claimed they “stand against extremism that threatens liberty and freedom in all its forms”.

UG Solutions said that members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club make up a tiny minority of the 450 contracted to go to Gaza, but would not provide the actual number of contractors when pressed on the issue.

The company has also sought to characterise Aguilar as someone whose account is untrustworthy.

Photograph by AP. Other picture by Facebook