Israel Has Killed Hundreds At Its Militarized Aid Sites In Gaza. Where Is The Accountability?

Since setting up its widely condemned aid distribution sites in Gaza two months ago, Israel’s military has killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians trying to access desperately needed food amid a starvation crisis created by Israeli forces themselves.

Israeli soldiers overseeing the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites have opened fire on Palestinians waiting for food nearly every day, worsening the territory’s humanitarian crisis by continuing to bomb families and block most aid from entering.

The United Nations’ human rights office said Tuesday that at least 410 Palestinians have been killed trying to reach the GHF sites since May 27, when they were launched. Israeli forces have also killed at least 93 others who were trying to approach the few aid convoys belonging to the UN and other humanitarian groups. According to the Gaza Government Media Office, the number of those killed while getting aid is closer to 549.

“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food,” Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the human rights office, said on Tuesday, adding that GHF is “in contradiction with international standards” on aid distribution.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said this week that its 60-bed field hospital in the southernmost city of Rafah has had to activate its mass casualty procedures 20 times since the aid sites launched. On Tuesday, the hospital received a mass casualty influx of 149 cases, the majority of which were gunshot wounds. All responsive patients said they were wounded on their way to an aid site, according to the ICRC.

“People in the south, for instance, would walk for dozens of kilometers, a journey that would take at least eight hours on foot, and sit there and camp, literally sleeping on the beach overnight. … And around two past midnight, they would start waking up and getting ready for the journey,” European Council visiting fellow Muhammad Shehada said on Thursday.

“At that point, they will try to find their way into the GHF distribution centers. So as soon as that happens, the IDF would claim, ‘We detected unauthorized movement,’ or, ‘We feel threatened, unsafe, unloved, unhappy,’” he continued. “And then they empty machine guns into them, mow them down, gun them down immediately. We’ve seen them also using artillery fire, gunboats firing at people, drones and even airstrikes at starving crowds.”

The Israeli military has claimed that it only opens fire to control the crowds, or when it sees armed gangs or Hamas militants trying to steal food. But Shehada said most of those gangs are actually working with Israeli forces, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that his government has provided arms to some groups in an attempt to undercut Hamas.

“I have a list of the names of the leaders of those gangs that have been armed, funded and provided equipment by Israel, and the majority of them are drug dealers, convicted murderers and members of ISIS,” Shehada said, citing the UN, the Red Cross and even Israeli media.

The regular barrages from the Israeli military and the presence of armed gangs has left independent aid groups afraid of working in Gaza, he added.

“The goal is basically to deter those organizations from even trying to pick up the aid in the first place, because their humanitarian workers, the truck drivers, are very afraid for their personal safety and their lives,” he continued.

The weaponization of food is part of a wider humanitarian crisis in Gaza — where an average of 112 children a day are admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition, patients with weak immune systems cannot heal from their wounds, and disease and illness are more likely to spread. The World Food Program said that most families in Gaza are forced to survive on one meal per day, and a third of families go entire days without eating.

But with soldiers continuing to open fire on civilians and most aid continuing to sit outside Gaza, it’s not immediately clear what real accountability could look like for those running the private, militarized aid sites.

Al-Kheetan called for an independent investigation into the GHF shootings, telling HuffPost on Thursday that the UN has “repeatedly” raised concerns about Israel’s inability to conduct such a probe. Under international law, third-party states also must search for and then prosecute those who have committed or ordered the commission of what he called a war crime.

But just this week, the U.S. State Department announced it would send $30 million to the GHF, the U.S.’s first known government financial contribution to the opaque organization. Stacy Gilbert, a Biden-era State Department employee who resigned in protest of U.S. policy on Gaza, said on Thursday that instances of such emergency expedited funding are usually reserved for an organization that is already well-known to the government — which the GHF is not.

“Minimum that has to happen is the funding and the basic information about this group has to be public. If the United States government is funding this as a humanitarian operation, it has to be transparent about it,” Gilbert said. “No leaking documents, let’s be honest: Who is behind this, how much funding they’re getting, what is that contract. … We would always, always, always have to know that about humanitarian organizations.”

The daily shootings have led more international groups and countries to speak out more on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with the European Union saying Thursday that it “deplores” the starvation crisis and demanding Israel fully lift the aid blockade. But experts stress that at this point, words from the international community are not enough.

“There’s this level of pathetic cowardice, deliberate ignorance. They want to not know, they want to remain ignorant in order to maintain plausible deniability,” Shehada said. “The recent show of strength that you see … their own diplomats, their own advisers, their own civil servants keep telling me behind closed doors, ‘This is all fraud, this is all a sham.’ These are maneuvers, PR stunts to grab headlines while continuing to support, to aid, to finance the very genocide that they claim to oppose.”