When it was first established, in February, the main selling point of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was that it was the best of bad options. The foundation’s masterminds, Israel and the US, argued that using private security contractors to hand out aid parcels from stations inside Israeli military zones would be safer and prevent them from being intercepted by Hamas.
Global aid organisations condemned the plan for flying in the face of international law and humanitarian principles. But Israel’s government had already banned UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, from operating inside Gaza, and either restricted the entrance of aid groups to scale their operations or stopped them altogether. For Gaza’s two million civilians, suffering one of the world’s most acute humanitarian crises, the only available alternative to the GHF experiment was certain mass starvation.
The experiment has failed. Since the GHF sites opened, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed approaching them or waiting in the queue – many of them, if not most, allegedly by the Israeli military. Some of the deaths have been attributed to stampedes, others to Hamas fighters and several to GHF security contractors themselves.
Some GHF contractors have come forward to the international media, which is barred by Israel’s military from reporting freely in Gaza, to speak out about some of their colleagues’ alleged conduct. The most appalling allegations describe behaviour that, if proved, would be criminal – treating guard towers at aid sites more like snipers' nests from which to pick off vulnerable Palestinians. In a statement on Monday, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA's Commissioner-General, described the GHF sites as "a sadistic death trap".
Incidents at GHF sites reflect a broader pattern of Palestinian civilians being targeted near aid delivery points throughout Gaza. The bloodiest yet occurred on Sunday, when 93 people were allegedly killed by the Israeli military while approaching a food bank near Gaza City. One eyewitness told The National Israeli forces fired “from all directions” as civilians approached an aid lorry with their hands raised.
The GHF says shooting incidents at its sites, for which it denies responsibility, should not overshadow the organisation’s work. It claims to have delivered as many as half a million meals a day. Even this figure, however, is underwhelming in comparison to the UN-backed meal delivery system, which delivered just over one million meals a day through a network of 180 kitchens in April, before new access restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities cut this figure down by 70 per cent.
Denying access to food, whether through restrictions or terrorising people queueing for aid, is a war crime – a point that has been made repeatedly by Michael Fakhri, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food. Twenty-eight countries, including Britain and France, have now condemned Israel’s aid policy as dangerous and destabilising.
On Sunday, talks began in Cairo and Doha between Israel, the US and several Arab countries on resuming aid airdrops to Gaza – an imperfect but far safer delivery method than the one in place now. In truth, the UN system for aid delivery, designed and implemented by seasoned humanitarians with global funding and oversight, is the only truly effective and morally acceptable one. Allowing Israel to set the terms for aid distribution has achieved little other than bolstering a perception that it has no intention of stopping the systematic starvation of Palestinians.
