DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip >> A new aid system in Gaza opened its first distribution hubs Monday, according to a U.S.-backed group that said it began delivering food to Palestinians who face growing hunger after Israel’s nearly three-month blockade to pressure Hamas.

The head of the group resigned Sunday, hours before the program was set to start operating, saying that he had found it impossible to perform the job independently.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by Israel and the U.S., is taking over the handling of aid despite objections from United Nations. The desperately needed supplies started flowing on a day that saw Israeli strikes kill at least 52 people in Gaza.

The group said truckloads of food — it did not say how many — had been delivered to its hubs, and distribution to Palestinians had begun. It was not clear where the hubs were located or how those receiving supplies were chosen.

“More trucks with aid will be delivered tomorrow, with the flow of aid increasing each day,” the foundation said in a statement.

The project’s supporters say it will enable Palestinian civilians to access food while preventing Hamas from stealing, stockpiling and even selling it at elevated prices. Critics, including the United Nations, say it is a dangerous plan that will force civilians to walk miles through Israeli military lines to find food and likely accelerate an Israeli goal to displace people from northern to southern Gaza.

Israel has pushed for an alternative aid delivery plan because it says it must stop Hamas from seizing aid. The U.N. has denied that the militant group has diverted large amounts.

Director resigns

Jake Wood, executive director of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, stepped down after reports in several news outlets, including the New York Times, raised questions about the group’s independence and its connections with Israel.

In a statement distributed by the foundation, Wood said: “It is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, which I will not abandon.”

The foundation has hired private contractors, including one run by a former CIA officer, to secure and distribute food from four sites in areas of southern Gaza under Israeli military control.

Until his resignation, Wood had maintained that he operated independently of Israel and its interests, and had pledged in an interview with the Times that he would not participate in a program that enabled the displacement of civilians.

Then, Saturday, the Times and other outlets published articles that cast doubt on the project’s autonomy. The Times found that the contours of the project were first conceived in late 2023, weeks after the start of the war, by a group of Israeli officials and military officers and their partners in the Israeli business sector.

Throughout 2024, Israeli officials developed the project with private American security contractors, principally Philip F. Reilly, a former senior CIA officer. By late 2024, a team led by Reilly had settled on the idea of forming a foundation to fund and hire private contractors to take over aid distribution in Gaza, according to a planning document reviewed by the Times.

It’s not clear who is funding the group, which said it had appointed an interim leader, John Acree, to replace Wood.

The organization has said its distribution points will be guarded by private security firms and that the aid would reach a million Palestinians — around half of Gaza’s population — by the end of the week.

Under pressure from allies, Israel began allowing a trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza last week after blocking all food, medicine, fuel or other goods from entering since early March. Aid groups have warned of famine and say the aid that has come in is nowhere near enough to meeting mounting needs.

Hamas warned Palestinians on Monday not to cooperate with the new aid system, saying it is aimed at furthering those objectives.

Airstrikes hit shelter

The Israeli airstrikes killed at least 36 people in a school-turned-shelter that was hit as people slept, setting their belongings ablaze, according to local health officials. The military said it targeted militants operating from the school.

Israel renewed its offensive in March after ending a ceasefire with Hamas. It has vowed to seize control of Gaza and keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed or disarmed, and until it returns the remaining 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, from the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in the 2023 attack. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed around 54,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It says more than half the dead are women and children but does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

Israel says it plans to facilitate what it describes as the voluntary migration of over 2 million people in Gaza, a plan rejected by Palestinians and much of the international community.

Israel’s military campaign has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and internally displaced some 90% of its population. Many have fled multiple times.

Ultranationalists march, break into UN compound

Chanting “Death to Arabs” and singing “May your village burn,” groups of young Israeli Jews made their way through Muslim neighborhoods of Jerusalem’s Old City on Monday during an annual march marking Israel’s conquest of the eastern part of the city.

Palestinian shopkeepers closed early and police lined the alleys ahead of the march that often becomes a rowdy and sometimes violent procession of ultranationalist Jews.

Police kept a close watch as demonstrators jumped, danced and sang.

Hours earlier, a small group of protesters, including an Israeli member of parliament, stormed a compound in east Jerusalem belonging to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has banned. The compound has been mostly empty since January, when staff were asked to stay away for security reasons. The U.N. says the compound is protected under international law.

This report includes information from the New York Times.