Gaza: Deadly Israeli-US supply distribution scheme must be dismantled and siege lifted

27 June, Gaza: The Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza, launched one month ago, is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies.

With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls on the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical, and humanitarian supplies and to revert to the pre-existing principled humanitarian system, coordinated by the UN.

This disaster has been orchestrated by the Israeli-US proxy operating under the name Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The way supplies are distributed forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies. 

These sites hinder women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities from accessing aid and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process. Yet each renewed atrocity now happens with barely a shrug, let alone condemnation, from an international community seemingly resigned to its role in allowing and perpetuating a campaign consistent with patterns of genocide. This cannot be allowed to continue.

“The four distribution sites, all located in areas under the full control of Israeli forces after people had been forcibly displaced from there, are the size of football fields surrounded by watch points, mound of earth and barbed wire. The fenced entrance gives only one access point in or out,” says Aitor Zabalgogeaskoa, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza. “GHF workers drop the pallets and the boxes of food and open the fences, allowing thousands in all at once to fight down to the last grain of rice.

“If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot,” says Zabalgogeaskoa. “If they arrive late, they shouldn't be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’, they get shot.”

Every day, MSF teams see patients who have been killed or wounded trying to get food at one of these sites.

“A lot of people were getting directly shot at. This is not aid – it's a death trap,” says Hani Abu Soud, a community member at Al-Mawasi primary healthcare centre. “They were going to kill us one by one. We were hungry, we were just trying to feed our children. What else can I do? A bag of lentils costs around 30-40 shekels [€6 – €10]”.

“We do not have that kind of money. Death has become cheaper than survival.”

As the distributions have continued, medical teams have noticed a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds. In the MSF field hospital in Deir Al-Balah the number of patients with

gunshot wounds increased by 190 per cent the week of 8 June, compared to the week before. The still barely functioning hospitals in Gaza are devastated; running on minimal supplies of pain relief, anaesthetic and blood. Fully functioning hospitals would struggle to cope with such a high number of trauma patients flooding emergency rooms every day.

Injured patients seek help at basic healthcare clinics or field hospitals, since larger hospitals better equipped to provide treatment for violent trauma have been damaged by Israel’s attacks on healthcare facilities, with many no longer functioning. The MSF clinic in Al Mawasi, which is not typically equipped to treat trauma patients, has received 423 people wounded from the distribution sites since 7 June. Ten or more patients with violent injuries arrive from distribution sites each day. These injuries require immediate lifesaving treatment, like blood transfusions or surgery, that our medical teams cannot provide in a basic healthcare clinic. Patients are referred to the few remaining hospitals still functioning like Nasser hospital, but with healthcare so scarce, MSF has received reports of people wounded at aid distribution sites dying from their injuries before they can receive treatment.

With no food in the tent he shared with his family, seventeen-year-old Ashraf went to a distribution site on 23 June. “I told him it was too dangerous. He said he wanted to get something for his sister,” says Hanan, Ashraf’s mother. “Thirty minutes later he called me, crying for help. He had been shot. This ‘aid’ is soaked in blood.”

Hanan was being treated at Al Mawasi basic healthcare clinic.

Aid must not be controlled by a warring party to further its military objectives. The Israeli authorities have used a deliberate tactic of food deprivation against Palestinians in Gaza. They have weaponised food supply by denying it to people, then by limiting it to a trickle, in a complete violation of international humanitarian law. Humanitarian principles exist to enable the facilitation of aid to those who need it most, with dignity. Aid must be delivered at scale, consistent with these principles. The people of Gaza are in vital and immediate need of the re-establishment of a genuine aid system, and a sustained ceasefire, for their very survival.