As Israel, under international pressure, allowed humanitarian supplies to trickle into Gaza this week, the United Nations found itself in an "impossible position," according to officials.
Attempting to deliver the meagre amount of aid would put UN workers in danger and yet barely scratch the surface of the "ocean" of need.
The risk of looting was high, as was the risk of aid workers being killed as Israel once again upped its military assault on the enclave.
And there was an additional risk, UN officials acknowledged: the accusation of taking part in little more than a propaganda exercise - one that grew as the aid remained stuck in the crossing point's inspection area for several days.
But after an 11-week total blockade on food, water and medical supplies and with the population facing starvation, the UN did not have the "luxury to say no," the UN Secretary General's spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
As the first deliveries finally set out from the Kerem Shalom crossing point, the UN reported that a number of lorries carrying flour were intercepted by residents and their contents removed.
"As far as I know, this was not a criminal act with armed men," Mr Dujarric told reporters.
"It was what I'd been referring to sometimes as self-distribution, which I think only reflects the very high level of anxiety that people in Gaza are feeling, not knowing when the next humanitarian delivery will take place," he said.
Armed looters attacked an aid convoy on Thursday night, according to local authorities. Bakeries were overwhelmed as hungry crowds gathered.
The chaotic resumption of UN aid deliveries was a temporary measure permitted by Israel in response to rising criticism from allies.
But Israel, with US backing, is already preparing to take control of aid distribution inside Gaza and bypass established UN mechanisms.
The United States and Israel have long claimed that UN aid was being diverted to Hamas and other militants in Gaza, which the UN rejects.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will bypass UN aid mechanisms
The new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), headquartered in Switzerland, will build distribution centres run by private US companies and is expected to be operational by the end of this month.
Last week, the acting US ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea told the UN Security Council the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was "an independent entity that has been established to provide a secure mechanism capable of delivering aid directly to those in need without Hamas stealing, looting, or leveraging this assistance for its own ends".
Ms Shea went on to cite the testimony of freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi who "witnessed his Hamas captors carry dozens and dozens of boxes of aid marked with UN and UNRWA emblems into the tunnel where he was held hostage", she said.
But the initiative was immediately condemned by the United Nations and other non-governmental aid agencies.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said that setting up a new aid monitoring and distribution system risked "further controlling and callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour".
In remarks delivered on Friday, the UN chief reiterated the UN’s refusal to cooperate with the new system.
"We will not take part in any scheme that fails to respect international law and the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality," he told reporters.
Head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Tom Fletcher went further in the Security Council last week, calling it "a fig leaf for further violence and displacement of Palestinians".
"It is a cynical sideshow, a deliberate distraction," he told council members.
And UN agencies on the ground confirmed their opposition.
"Israeli officials have sought to shut down the existing aid distribution system run by the United Nations and its humanitarian partners and have us agree to deliver supplies through Israeli hubs under conditions set by the Israeli military," the UN’s humanitarian country team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a statement.
The plan appeared designed to "reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic as part of a military strategy", the statement said.
"It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarised zones to collect rations, threatening lives, including those of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement."
Elizabeth Campbell, director of ODI Global, a Washington DC-based thinktank told RTÉ News that effective humanitarian assistance must be civilian in nature.
"No military, paramilitary, or armed contractor or mercenary can successfully provide basic aid to civilians without endangering their lives and compounding the immense suffering unfolding in Gaza," she said.
The UN could not and should not work under these conditions, she said, "as they will easily be instrumentalised as a weapon of war, rather than a protector of the world’s most vulnerable civilian war victims".
But despite widespread criticism, it seemed that plans for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were moving forward apace.
Satellite imagery appeared to show the construction of three large distribution sites near Rafah, according to press reports.
Safe Reach Solutions, one of the private US companies slated to work with the foundation, advertised for staff with non-governmental experience including with the United Nations and its agencies.
Asked if the UN objected to the recruitment of UN staff to a foundation it was firmly opposed to, Mr Dujarric said he hoped that anyone who had worked for the UN would continue to live up to the organisation’s principles "even if they leave".
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed new aid distribution points would be operated by US companies and secured by the Israeli Defence Forces.
He said that "sterile zones" would be created in the south of Gaza to where civilians should move in order to access aid.
He added that Palestinians who enter the zones "don’t necessarily go back".
Earlier this month, Israel's far right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said that once Palestinians reach a "humanitarian zone" in the south of Gaza they will "leave in great numbers" to third countries.
"If Israel moves forward with this plan and further demonises and sidelines the heroic work of the UN," said Ms Campbell, "it will be a sad day for international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, and the UN charter, the very tools and agreements set up in the aftermath of World War II to prevent future atrocities".
But Director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Jake Wood told US television network CNN that Israel controlled access to Gaza and it was "their belief that there is a large percentage of aid that's being interdicted by Hamas and other non-state actors," he said.
"We have no choice but to create a mechanism which operates in that construct, and in that frame," he said, adding: "I'm here to solve a problem, and feed people."
He said ultimately the international aid community has a choice to make.
"This is going to be the mechanism by which aid can be distributed in Gaza," he said, "are you willing to participate?
"The answer is going to be pretty critical to whether or not this ramps up to sufficiently feed 2.2 million people in a very desperate situation," he said.
It remained unclear if UN operations would be banned from operating in Gaza once the new mechanism was up and running.
UN agencies would continue distributing aid for as long as they were given permission, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, said on Friday.
"I don't know if and when that will change," he added.
