Efforts to feed desperately hungry Palestinians in Gaza are facing setbacks, peril, and pandemonium.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed venture with alleged links to the Israeli military, says it is making progress in providing meals in the blockaded Gaza Strip since taking over food distribution from the United Nations in late May.
But Gaza residents, who are struggling to find food, describe the distribution process as chaotic. And one Israeli military expert faults Israel’s attempt to manage the complex process at arm’s length.
Why We Wrote This
In Gaza, even the strongest pangs of hunger do not persuade everyone to seek food in the only places they can find it – official hubs run by a U.S.-Israeli group. The fear of fatal gunfire is a major deterrent.
Insecurity stalks the aid effort. Scores of Palestinians in Gaza have allegedly been killed by the Israeli army while collecting aid, and a Hamas attack on Wednesday killed eight GHF workers, the organization said.
Amid the persistent violence, the foundation has called on the U.N. and international organizations to partner with it to urgently ramp up aid – a call they have rejected.
To receive food from the GHF, Gaza residents have to pass through Israeli military zones to line up at four distribution centers in southern and central Gaza. In a statement, the GHF said it provided more than 2 million meals to Gazans Friday, 2.6 million meals Thursday, and more than 20 million since operations began late last month.
Yet Palestinians in Gaza say they are risking their lives, facing stampedes and gunfire from Israeli soldiers and drones, for the mere possibility of finding food.
Instead of obtaining the entire food packages that the GHF has organized, which it says contain enough food for a family for between three and five days, Gaza residents say they must scramble for individual food items as crowds rip open boxes and compete for their spilled contents.
After several hours, some are left with a package of biscuits, a bag of flour, cooking oil, or a single can of beans. Many go home empty-handed.
“Why did they shoot?”
Mahmoud Hussein al-Haj Ahmed, a father of 12, says he lined up to receive aid twice at the distribution point near Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza.
On his first attempt he managed to secure two cans of fava beans. On his second, he says, all he found was a brush with death.
As he and others gathered near the aid site early on June 10, he says, Israeli quadcopters and soldiers opened fire on the crowd.
“Every time I moved forward, I saw more people killed. One person a meter-and-a-half away was sniped in the head,” Mr. Haj Ahmed says.
“Why did they shoot? If they are afraid of us, why did they ask us to come and get food parcels? This is not an aid pickup. This is a death trap,” he charges.
Palestinians in Gaza say the Israeli military is firing live rounds to keep aid recipients within tight, penned-in spaces as they wait to be allowed into the fenced-off area where aid cartons are placed.
“They open the gate and you feel like you are a dog. And then there are bullets to your right and to your left,” Mr. Haj Ahmed says.
After a first attempt to obtain food for their 15 family members left them empty-handed, Salem Abu Haddaf and his brother Yahya left their tents at 10 p.m. one night and walked several miles to a distribution point, sleeping overnight in the open air, before arriving before dawn on Tuesday.
“My children cry and want to eat. I don’t know how to answer them,” he says.
Instead of opening at 6 a.m., as announced, the distribution center opened its gates in the dark at 3 a.m. As the brothers rushed for the food, they say an Israeli quadcopter opened fire and Yahya was wounded by shrapnel in his back and leg.
“A quadcopter came to his side and fired a missile at the people. We just started running so we wouldn’t get hit,” says Mr. Abu Haddaf, who managed to get jam, sugar, and biscuits for his children.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was unaware of the incident.
The army did, however, say that in another incident on Wednesday, the “IDF fired warning shots toward suspects who were advancing while posing a threat to the troops, in the area of the Netzarim Corridor” near where the central aid distribution site is located, “despite warnings that the area is an active combat zone.”
“The IDF is aware of reports regarding individuals injured; the details are under review,” it added.
In a statement to The Monitor, the GHF said it urges people not to stray from the limited routes allowed by the IDF. “We encourage folks not to congregate or travel to sites before they open,” it said.
Yet the guidance does not mitigate the difficult choice facing Gaza residents: risk everything for an uncertain chance at food, or stay home, alive, with a starving family.
Like many, Madeline al-Harazin, a widowed mother living in a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah, says she is unwilling to go collect aid herself.
“I do not want to risk myself or the life of my children in order to get bread that is covered with blood. I can’t ask my children to go there,” she says, noting that after her teenage son’s friend was killed, he refused to try himself.
For Gazans living in the north, like Mr. Haj Ahmed’s daughters, GHF food is not even an option – there are no distribution points in northern Gaza.
Can it turn around?
The aid chaos has left entire neighborhoods of Gaza with empty markets and without food. Starvation, residents say, is widespread.
But can the aid distribution improve?
The GHF attributes the lack of order to the high demand for food and the limited number of distribution centers. To ramp up distribution, it says, requires involvement from the U.N. and international organizations.
“We cannot make any of this more orderly until there’s food security in Gaza. We need the U.N. and international organizations to work with us to achieve this,” the GHF said in its statement to The Monitor. “The alternative is to do nothing, and we will not accept that.”
But the U.N. and others have refused to work with the GHF, saying it falls short of international standards for neutrality and independence.
The foundation says it is working with the Israeli military to open new distribution sites in central and northern Gaza to lessen pressures.
“Some of these concerns should be alleviated when we are able to open up more sites,” it added.
“No conditions for success”
But severely impeding the GHF aid rollout are Israel’s conflicting interests, says Israel Ziv, a retired general and a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza division. Israel wants to oversee the aid distribution and cut out the U.N., without physically undertaking the distribution itself, he notes.
“You cannot manage something that is physical, very technical, and not be there and not deal with it,” Mr. Ziv says.
The previous system, under which food and consumables were distributed by the U.N.’s Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, reached a greater number of people through products reaching stores and distribution centers, Mr. Ziv notes, while the GHF’s new system of a box per family, creates a “logistical nightmare.”
“There are no conditions for success here,” he stresses, noting the “contorted” aid distribution system combined with the opposition of international organizations and Hamas’ role as a spoiler.
Highlighting these challenges, late Wednesday Hamas ambushed a bus carrying two dozen Palestinian GHF workers to a distribution center in southern Gaza, killing eight of them and injuring others, the GHF said, in an attack that came after days of Hamas threats.
Condemning the “heinous and deliberate attack,” the GHF said it “decided that the best response to Hamas’ cowardly murderers was to keep delivering food for the people of Gaza who are counting on us. We will not be deterred from our mission.”
Palestinians in Gaza, meanwhile, wistfully recall the previous aid system.
“At least in the previous distribution I wasn’t humiliated, I didn’t fear, I felt dignity,” says Mr. Haj Ahmed. “Where is the humanity in this? This is a plan to humiliate us as human beings.”
Shoshanna Solomon contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Israel.
