The United States said it approved $ 30 million in direct funding for the controversial group supported by Israel, providing Aid to Gaza, despite increasing concern concerning a series of deadly attacks against Palestinian rescue applicants near its distribution centers on the besieged territory.
“We call on other countries to also support GHF, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its critical work,” the spokesman for the State Department Tommy Pigott said on Thursday.
The GHF, supported by the United States and Israel, has been a generalized source of criticism since its creation in May. The organization was put in place in the midst of increasing pressure on Israel to alleviate its total blockage of several months on humanitarian aid by entering the band. The blockade had pushed most of the Gaza population on the edge of the famine.
International aid groups and the United Nations refused to work with the GHF, saying that it violates fundamental humanitarian principles by coordinating delivery with Israeli troops supported by American and private American security personnel.
Video clips have emerged showing that the Palestinians are turned while trying to collect food aid.
At least 549 Palestinians were killed while waiting for food aid distributed on GHF sites, the Gaza government media office announced on Thursday. The GHF, which is officially a private group, has denied that fatal incidents have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.
The acting executive director of GHF, John Acree, praised the American contribution and said that he was “time for unity and collaboration”.
“We look forward to other aid and humanitarian organizations that join us so that we can feed even more gasans, he said in a statement.
Asked about the criticism of the operation, Pigott said that the group had distributed 46 million meals so far, which is “absolutely incredible” and “should be applauded”.
The financial support of the GHF is part of President Donald Trump and the “Pursuit of Peace of the Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the region,” he said.
In accordance with the Pigott declaration on Friday evening, Trump told journalists that he thought that a ceasefire ending the Israel War against Gaza could be reached in a week.
‘Nothing but death’
A witness who tried in vain to receive the help of the distribution sites several times described the nightmare conditions which he was confronted when he had to reach the hubs.
Atar Riyad, father of eight children from Beit Hanoon who was moved to Gaza City, he had traveled to the distribution centers near the so-called Netzarim corridor in the center of Gaza on several occasions. Thousands of hungry Palestinians met near the sites early in the morning, said Riyadh.
He said that in an opportunity, he saw trucks running on aid seekers. On another, he saw the bodies of young people who seemed to have been slaughtered.
“We went to find only death before us. There was only death,” he said.
Riyadh said his best friend and neighbors were one of those who had been killed in the distribution centers. “All died when they were trying to make food to feed their families,” he said.
Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of the UCLA Law Promised Institute Europe, told Tel Aviv Tribune that GHF workers could bear criminal responsibility for the killeries of assistants near the group’s distribution points.
“It is very difficult to know why these people are targeted and killed, but I think it is quite clear that they are unarmed civilians who are desperately trying to get food for their families,” she said.
“The shooting on people in this Prima Facie situation is a war crime.”
She said that people working for the GHF should “think about the extent to which they could be accomplices of these crimes”.
“If they are aware that this will happen – or even in certain jurisdictions, they are aware of the substantial risk that this happens, which seems that they must be … they could be carefully responsible for participating in these crimes.”
Attacks on assistance seekers continue
Friday, at least 83 people were killed during Israeli attacks in Gaza, according to several assistance seekers near a distribution site in the south of Gaza.
A source from the Kuwait hospital said that at least six people were killed by others injured after Israeli forces opened fire on the Palestinians looking for aid near a GHF distribution center north of Rafah.
On Friday, during a separate attack, at least 10 people were killed and 10 were injured in a strike of Israeli drones on a group of people near Sha’ban Al Rayas in the east of the region of Gaza City.
Two people were killed in an Israeli bombing that targeted tent housing in the Al-Mawasi region, a medical source said in Tel Aviv Tribune.
Meanwhile, demolition operations are continuing. An Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent reported that the Israeli army had carried out massive operations to demolish residential buildings in the eastern areas of the city of Gaza.
