On 26 May 2025 Anna Foster (AF) interviewed the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland (JE) during the BBC Today radio programme. Egeland was previously United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

The above is a recording of this and a transcript is included below.

The background

Under international law Israel, as an occupying power, has the responsibility to provide for the basic needs of civilians in Gaza, including food and medicine. But for 11 weeks Israel blockaded all aid, in addition to killing thousands of Palestinians with bombs and drones.

Netanhayu’s government insists that there are no food shortages in Gaza because Hamas has stolen the food previously allowed to enter. Nevertheless some Israeli military officials are now privately admitting that Palestinians are on the brink of starvation.

Israel refuses to work with the aid organisations that have previously distributed aid in Gaza. They have selected Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to distribute humanitarian aid during the ongoing Gaza humanitarian crisis.

GHF, which is backed by the Trump administration and the Israeli government, is based in Geneva and incorporated in the United States. It aims to use a small number of distribution hubs, mostly in southern Gaza, secured by the Israeli military and private US-based contractors.

Beyond logistical problems with Israel’s plans, humanitarian organisations say that agreeing to work under Israel’s military would compromise the neutrality that is the most crucial protection for their unarmed teams.

It would also make it harder for them to operate in other conflict zones, where neutrality is key to being able to reach civilians in contested areas.

“These plans are basically instrumentalising humanitarian aid, putting it into the hands of a party to the conflict, which goes against the principles of impartiality and independence. We don’t work with parties to (any) conflict,” said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead for the Palestinian territory at Oxfam. “Giving Israel power over who receives the aid…basically turns it into a tool of coercion, and it blurs the line between the humanitarian assistance and Israel’s military objectives, which in turn puts civilians and aid workers at serious risk.”

That is a particular concern because Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of aid workers during the war, including both Palestinians and foreign citizens.

In the interview which we published on 20 May, Tom Fletcher said:

“We’ve got to get the aid in ourselves…We know how to do this. We can do it in line with humanitarian principles. And the world, the international community, the donors who provided that aid are very, very clear with us that this is the only way to do it. To go with the other modality would actually be to support the objectives of the military offensive and to further dehumanise and humiliate those civilians who badly need that aid.”

Now GHF Executive Director, Jake Wood, has resigned, saying it was clear it wasn’t possible to implement the plan while sticking to humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence.

Nevertheless on 27 May Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claims truckloads of food have been delivered.

Hamas condemned the new system, saying it would “replace order with chaos, enforce a policy of engineered starvation of Palestinian civilians, and use food as a weapon during wartime.“

Transcript of the interview

Jan Egeland

AF: Just explain first of all, because people may wonder what the issue is with this new proposed system, which the Humanitarian Foundation has said will still start as planned this week.

JE: Yeah, it seems the board will now continue to try to work without any partners, without an executive director, with all the people that they posted were on their whole apparatus, gone. And the reason they’re all gone is that this is militarized, privatized, politicized, and we cannot have aid in a war zone, in the crossfire that is not in conformity with neutrality, impartiality and independence, which are the humanitarian principles we’ve been living by now in humanitarian work for a hundred years.

AF: And again, I’m really keen that people understand how this works and why it’s a problem. Why is having an organisation like that, why does that cause issues of politicisation, of lack of independence, as Jake Woods said?

JE: Yeah, I mean, to start with, the people behind it are militaries, ex-CIA, ex-security people. There’s a security firm that is going to work closely with one party to the armed conflict, the Israeli Defense Forces. They will have some hubs, apparently, where people have to walk long distances, where they will be screened according to the needs of the one side in this conflict, Israel.

I mean, we give aid to women, children, families, according to needs. That’s what we do in all war zones, all over the world, and have done so for generations. We cannot have a party to a conflict, decide where, how and whom will get the aid. So let’s go back to the system that worked. It worked very well until the ceasefire ended in March by Israel and when Israel then sealed off yet again Gaza so that people have been besieged and starved since then.

AF: How do organizations like yours stop things like, well, things like looting of aid, but for example, Hamas taking that aid and either reselling it at high prices to civilians or keeping it for people within its own organization? It has been an issue. So how do you stop that from happening?

JE: Listen, we work like we do all over the world in that kind of zones. The aid is first registered, then it is scanned, then it’s manually inspected at the border crossing by Israel itself and by our UN people.

Then it’s loaded, then it is offloaded, then it’s inspected yet again, and then it is tracked and then monitored before it is delivered directly to the family that needs it. There has been looting, and why is that? Because Israel bombed to pieces the civilian Gaza police, so the gangs took over and I’ve been there myself twice and I was shocked to see that the gangs, the looters, can assemble freely and go anywhere on Gaza. Whereas we cannot and certainly they claim that they are now attacking anyone that have arms or anything like that. But the looters are let loose.

So let’s get a system that works. There is a proposal from the UN. Tom Fletcher has presented it even in your program. We’re ready to go. We have thousands of trucks ready to go with 160 thousand pallets of aid to a starving population.

AF: What will happen logistically in the next few days, because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said that it will continue its work or will begin its work as planned. And it has the backing of Israel and the US. Will you be trying to deliver aid side by side? Is there any way in which you and they will work together? Would you give your aid to them for distribution? How might it work?

JE: No, the Norwegian Refugee Council is a very principled organization and that’s why we survive from Syria to Somalia to Iran to all places on earth. And by the way, we were closed down by Hamas in 2015 because they tried to interfere in our aid. We refused it. They closed us down and after a few weeks they yielded and we have since done principled aid for a generation in Gaza. We will not touch this privatized, militarized, politicized foundation.

We’re behind the plan of the UN and the rest of the humanitarian community. I hope that will go now in parallel. There’s been a few trucks come in in the normal fashion, but not anywhere close to what’s needed to avoid an enormous famine, which will be on the hands of the occupier Israel.

Read international law. They are accountable for allowing aid to the civilian population. Hamas is a terrible organization. They have hostages they should release tomorrow, but we don’t see them there anymore. It is Israel that is sealing off our aid. We haven’t gotten a single truck in since February.

AF: Jan Egeland, thank you for joining us. Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council.