The Israeli military has killed at least 410 people trying to get food at Israeli-run aid sites in Gaza in the past month.
This constitutes “a likely war crime” that violates international standards on aid distribution, according to the United Nations. “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,” the U.N. human rights office said. Palestinian health authorities reported that Israel killed 44 people waiting for aid in separate incidents in southern and central Gaza just on Tuesday this week. Israeli soldiers have reportedly killed aid-seekers with bullets, tank shells, and drone-mounted weapons.
Israeli officers and soldiers said that they were ordered to deliberately fire at unarmed civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in an investigation published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday; the military prosecution has called for a review into possible war crimes.
The Israeli military has said reports about casualties at aid sites have prompted “thorough examinations … in the Southern command” and that “instructions were issued to forces in the field following lessons learned.” “The aforementioned incidents are under review by the competent authorities,” an unnamed spokesperson for the Israeli military said in a statement emailed to The Intercept.
The aid distribution sites are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit formed earlier this year for the purpose of distributing aid in collaboration with the Israeli government and American private military and security companies, under a plan created by the U.S. and Israeli governments.
An open letter published earlier this week by more than a dozen human rights and legal advocacy groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Commission of Jurists, condemned the organization. The letter stated that the privatized, militarized aid distribution system — and close collaboration with Israeli authorities — undermines “the core humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” They urged corporate entities, donors, and individuals to suspend action or support that undermines international humanitarian law and “to reject any model that outsources life-saving aid to private, politically-affiliated actors and to press for the urgent restoration of independent, rights-based humanitarian access for all civilians in Gaza.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been marred with controversy from the start; the former head, Jake Wood, quit in May, worrying that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” Boston Consulting Group, which helped run the business, also backed out. The Israeli military said that they allow “the American civilian organization (GHF) to distribute aid to Gaza residents independently, and operate in proximity to the new distribution zones to enable the distribution alongside the continuation of IDF operational activities in the Gaza Strip” in a statement to the Intercept. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
