At least three people died and dozens were injured in Gaza ravaged by the war while thousands of hungry Palestinians tried to draw food from a controversial organization of Israeli states, naked the scale of the disaster inflicted on the enclave by the three -month -old aid block.
By punishing the warmth of noon on Tuesday, thousands of Palestinians climbed on fences and pushed through wrapped crowds to reach vital supplies brought by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new controversial group responsible for the delivery of aid to the Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
In the middle of the buzzing of Israeli military helicopters above and shots that click in the background, desperate crowds, especially women and children, in the Rafah region south of Gaza, he had trouble reaching the point of distribution of food during the first day of operation of the GHF.
“We are dying of famine. We have to feed our children who want to eat. What can we do else? I could do anything to feed them,” a Palestinian father told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“We saw people running, and we followed them, even if it meant to take a risk, and it was frightening. But fear is not worse than famine. ”
In addition to the dead and injuries, several people have also disappeared in the jostling that followed, said officials of Gaza, the incident coming in the middle of generalized hunger and the implacable Israeli bombing of Palestinian civilians, including children.
“The occupation forces, positioned in or around these areas, opened fire live on hungry civilians who have been attracted to these places under the pretext of receiving aid,” said the Gaza government media office in a press release, adding that the incident “provides undeniable proof of the total Israeli occupation in the management of the humanitarian disaster.
“What happened today in Rafah is a deliberate massacre and a war crime in its own right, committed in cold blood against weakened civilians by more than 90 days of famine induced by the seat.”
In a statement earlier, the Israeli army said that its forces did not lead the shots towards the Palestinians, but rather pulled warning fire in an outdoor area. He said that control of the situation had been established and that aid distribution would continue as planned.
‘Idea and inhuman plan’
The help of GHF, a foundation supported by the United States and approved by Israel, has arrived in Gaza despite allegations that the new group did not have the experience or the ability to relieve more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
The United Nations and Aid Groups say that the organization does not respect humanitarian principles and could be used to move more people from their homes while the Palestinians move to receive the aid of a limited number of distribution sites.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, said that seeing thousands of Palestinians storming the help site was “heartbreaking”.
“We and our partners have a detailed sound plan and on principles on principles, supported by the Member States to obtain aid to a desperate population,” he told journalists. “We continue to emphasize that a significant increase in humanitarian operations is essential to avoid famine and meet the needs of all civilians wherever they are.”
Chaos highlighted the amazing level of hunger gripping Gaza. According to the latest classification report for the integrated food security phase, 1.95 million people – 93% of the enclosure population – are faced with acute food shortages.
Aid groups have warned for months that Israel uses famine in Gaza as a weapon of war.
“This is not how the help is done,” said Ahmed Bayram, spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, in Tel Aviv Tribune, describing the scene in Rafah as the “inevitable consequence of a reckless and inhuman plan”.
“These are the scenes that we have literally warned all month now. He spread chaos. He spread the confusion. And that is the result,” he said.
“I think the best thing that can be done now is that this plan is canceled, to be reversed, and for us, professional humanitarian workers at the UN and NGOs to do our job. There are tons and tons of aid awaiting the border. (This is a very simple decision: open the doors and keep them open. ”
Israel made the GHF, a Swiss entity formed in February thanks to channel meetings back between civil servants and commercial figures linked to Israelis, a leading distributor. Meanwhile, Israel prevented the UN and other international organizations from helping.
Although it is promoted as a neutral organization, the close ties of the GHF with Israel and the United States caused a general condemnation. His former chief suddenly resigned this week, citing the inability of the foundation to maintain the main humanitarian principles of “neutrality, impartiality and independence”.
According to a New York Times report, the GHF came out of “private meetings of civil servants sharing the same ideas, military officers and businessmen with close ties with the Israeli government”.
Israel has said that its forces are not involved in the physical distribution of aid, although it supports the use by the biometric system by the system, including facial recognition, to the recipients of assistance in opportunity. The Palestinians fear that it is another Israeli monitoring and repression tool.
Critics have also warned that the GHF structure – and its concentration of aid in southern Gaza – could be used to depopulate northern Gaza, as planned by the Israeli army.
‘It is certainly not enough’
While the previous UND LED distribution network has operated around 400 sites across the band, the GHF has only set up four “mega-site” for 2.3 million residents of Gaza.
In Deir El-Balah, in the center of Gaza, the Hind Khoudary of Tel Aviv Tribune reported that many food parcels delivered were insufficient to support families.
Khoudary described a typical food box with 4 kg (8.8 lb) of flour, a few bags of pasta, two cans of beans, a pack of tea sachets and cookies. Other food plots contained lenses and soup in small quantities.
Although the GHF said that it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes on Tuesday, which, she said, amounted to 462,000 meals, Khoudary said rations would barely support a single family for a long time.
“It is certainly not enough, and it is not enough for all the humiliation that the Palestinians live to receive these food packages,” she said.