Including Blackwater... Revealing American security companies competing to manage aid distribution in Gaza

Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper said that the Israeli government is considering using private American security companies to supervise the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, which has prompted security companies to compete for huge contracts.

The newspaper quoted the Israeli newspaper "Globes" as saying that the Israeli government is studying a pilot model whereby a private American security company will be brought to the northern Gaza Strip to employ former soldiers in Western armies who will accompany food and medicine convoys to population centers and prevent Hamas from taking control instead of Israeli soldiers carrying out this dangerous mission, according to Globes.

According to the newspaper, the names that appeared are the two American companies, Orbis and Constellis, the latter of which had previously acquired the activities of Blackwater - the most famous private military security company in the United States, which won lucrative and controversial contracts during the second Iraq war.

A third company, GDC, owned by Israeli-American businessman Moti Kahane, claimed to be negotiating to bring an American security company to Gaza to work with it. GDC handles logistics and food delivery, and one option raised by Kahane in a media interview is to bring Constalis to Gaza, after recruiting veterans of combat units from the American, British and French armies, and ensuring that they are not Jewish.

At the same time, Kahane is an ardent supporter of the Democratic Party and has supported Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy, which will likely make his job more difficult under the new Trump administration. So it is possible that his potential partner will find her way to Gaza even without Kahane.

Constellis is the modern incarnation of Blackwater, which was founded by Erik Prince in the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and is made up of several mercenaries and gained prominence after the invasion of Iraq. Prince left Blackwater in 2009 after several controversies were investigated as Barack Obama was elected president. Blackwater was accused of shooting Iraqi civilians and increasing the use of military force against civilians.

The newspaper "Israel Hayom" reported on Tuesday that the aforementioned "proposal" has not yet received the approval of the Security and Political Affairs Cabinet (the cabinet), due to legal difficulties in defining the occupation according to the formula of international law, especially since the company itself will be an emissary of Israel, and will actually work on its behalf. In order to circumvent the legal obstacles, the security services are examining bringing in external funding from humanitarian aid organizations or foreign countries for the aforementioned private company, which costs tens of millions of dollars to operate.

Mercenary companies compete

Blackwater changed its name and merged with other companies that worked with the US military, forming a group called Constellations. The company currently employs 20,000 people in the United States and is active in 39 other countries around the world, according to the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. Its publications attempt to recruit mercenaries with the promise of advanced social conditions and insurance, and 70% of its employees are veterans of US military units.

Another American company that has presented the government with a plan to manage and distribute food supplies in northern Gaza is Orbis, whose plan has been discussed in a limited government forum in the past. Weekly Orbis is a little-known South Carolina company that employs 450 people and has been serving the U.S. Department of Defense for 20 years — mainly providing logistics, procurement, maintenance, computer engineering and support services at military bases and facilities. It was founded and is run by Jay Mossman, an American former senior U.S. Navy officer.

New Arab