Thousands of Palestinians overwhelmed a food distribution center in the south of Gaza, led by hunger after almost three months without access to fresh supplies.
It was a chaotic scene on Tuesday in the southern city of Rafah, while men, women and children crowded in the help center, looking for food to avoid malnutrition and famine.
The Israeli soldiers used gunshots to disperse the desperate crowds, while pulling on the fences separating them from the food boxes. The Gaza government media office reported that three Palestinians had been killed and 46 injured on the site. Several others remained missing.
From March 2, Israel had imposed a total blockade for help in Gaza torn by the war, as part of the military offensive, she started in the Palestinian enclave in October 2023.
As the fears of famine increased, the same goes for international pressure on Israel. Allies, including the United Kingdom, France and Canada, warned Israel earlier this month that it could face sanctions if aid restrictions were not lifted.
A few days later, Israel announced that it would allow “minimum” deliveries of essential supplies to resume.
But this announcement was controversial, especially for Israel’s decision to bypass traditional aid distribution networks, such as those led by the United Nations.
Instead, he exploited the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a non-profit organization supported by the United States, to direct the effort.
“There have been many questions raised, even within the Israeli government, on how it was going to work,” said Hamdah Salhut, Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent, reported from Amman, Jordan.
“Now, as you can see here, the private company that has been set up to distribute this aid has completely lost control.”
Israel blamed the Hamas armed Palestinian group for chaos at the aid center, which the group denied.
In a statement published on Tuesday, Hamas rather blamed Israel for not having “managed the humanitarian crisis which he deliberately created”.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent, Mohamed Vall, also said that there was no evidence that Hamas had disrupted the distribution of the aid. Rather, he highlighted the need: more than two million Palestinians live in Gaza.
“These are the inhabitants of Gaza, the civilians of Gaza, trying to get just a piece of food-just any piece of food for their children, for themselves,” he said.
Vall added that there was also skepticism on the ground on motivations behind the concentration of the aid distribution in the south of Gaza.
“They say that the reason why (Israeli officials) did this, the reason they have established these distribution points only in the south east that they want to encourage people – or even force them – to flee the north,” said Vall.
The fear remains, he said, that the displacement of the Palestinians to the south could be a “preliminary phase for the complete eviction” of the population of Gaza.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 54,056 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, that humanitarian aid and United Nations experts compared to a genocide.
Here are some scenes of the distribution of the help of Tuesday.
