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A US security contractor that guarded aid distribution at deadly Gaza sites is preparing to recruit hundreds of personnel as it seeks new business under Donald Trump’s peace plan for the devastated enclave.
UG Solutions told the FT it had made a “very broad” bid to provide anything from security for trucks to work sites and storage facilities for Trump’s contentious new Board of Peace, which is tasked with overseeing a new governance framework for Gaza.
“UG Solutions is prepared to support efforts on the ground in Gaza, or elsewhere in the Middle East, with several hundred or more staff and contractors,” the North Carolina-based company said.
While it added that it had not yet secured a mandate from the Board of Peace, “we have a very deep pool to tap into at this time and continue to recruit”.
UG Solutions has advertised on its website for Arabic speakers for roles including a “female cultural support officer” and an “international humanitarian security officer” with combat experience. The plan to recruit for roles in Gaza was first reported by Reuters.
The company deployed contractors to guard militarised aid sites run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was shut down last year after five months of operations during the devastating war between Israel and Hamas.
Hundreds of starving Palestinian aid seekers were killed by Israeli troops as they travelled through military zones to GHF sites, provoking fierce international condemnation at a time when severe Israeli restrictions on aid triggered a famine in Gaza.
The UN refused to co-operate with the system, describing it as unethical and unsafe. The UN and other aid groups were later able to scale up their own operations under the ceasefire deal, which went into effect in October and will be overseen by the Board of Peace.
The peace plan calls for Hamas to disarm, Israeli troops to withdraw, the deployment of an international stabilisation force and the rebuilding of the shattered enclave. The Palestinian militant group, whose October 7 2023 attack triggered the war, remains in control of almost half of Gaza, where the entire population of 2.1mn lives.
Trump, who chaired the Board of Peace’s inaugural meeting in Washington on Thursday, claimed he had secured an initial $7bn of donations for Gaza relief. The US also said Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania had committed troops to the international force while Egypt and Jordan would train police.
A spokesperson for UG Solutions said it was compiling a “reserve roster” of contractors who have been vetted and could be deployed to the region.
The spokesperson said the security firm had also offered to “provide advisory services with lessons learned to logistics companies or others that are perhaps new to Gaza or don’t have relationships with the communities”.
The spokesperson noted that there was no shortage of “security types” available to hire after the end of US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the “scaling down of US involvement around the world”.