This decision followed Israel’s refusal to allow the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) to deliver food to northern Gaza following claims that some agency staff had taken part in the attack on October 7 by members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Israel.
Oscar Camps, director of Open Arms, said the maritime route between Cyprus and Gaza had been open since December 20 but no organisation had used it.
They built a makeshift jetty from rubble and unloaded the aid just metres away from bombardments amid warnings from Israel that it could not guarantee their security, he said.
When others are assessing the situation we are already feeding, and in the process we learn what is going on, not the other way around
Andres, who is Spanish and American, said on X he decided to get involved in the maritime aid delivery after an invitation from the Cypriot government, hoping other aid providers would follow suit.
Earlier in the conflict, WCK had partnered with restaurants and hospitals in Israel to feed people displaced or injured by the October 7 Hamas attack on the country, and then switched in February to helping air drops of aid over Gaza.
Founded by Andres in 2010 after he travelled to Haiti to help following an earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, WCK has fast become one of the leading providers of emergency aid at scenes of natural disaster or human conflict.
The NGO describes itself as “first to the front lines”, using an “entrepreneurial and adaptive” approach to “err on the side of feeding people expediently vs. asking for permission or following systems and bureaucracy that lack urgency and flexibility”.
“When others are assessing the situation we are already feeding, and in the process we learn what is going on, not the other way around,” Andres told the Spanish language edition of Vanity Fair in a recent interview.
The charity says it entered Ukraine five days after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and set up restaurants in five cities.
Born in 1969 in a coal mining town in Spain’s northern Asturias region, Andres worked as an apprentice at Ferran Adria’s experimental El Bulli restaurant near Barcelona, before moving to the United States in 1991, where he set up tapas restaurant Jaleo.
His company ThinkFoodGroup now owns more than 20 restaurants, including one with two Michelin stars.
He has cultivated relationships with some of the US’ most powerful people, receiving a US$100 million donation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021 and striking up a rapport with former US president Barack Obama.
Obama’s government in 2014 named him an “Outstanding American by Choice”, an award given to naturalised US citizens who have achieved extraordinary things, following up with the National Humanities Medal in 2015.
His relationship with Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, was less cordial.
The two reached a settlement in 2017 after Trump sued Andres for breach of contract when the Spaniard cancelled plans for a restaurant in Trump’s Washington hotel following comments the then-presidential candidate made about Mexicans, calling them “rapists” and “murderers”.
