Israeli troops killed at least 17 Palestinians trying to reach food distribution sites on Tuesday, health authorities in Gaza said, as UN experts accused Israel’s military of committing war crimes including the “obliteration” of Gaza’s education system.
More than 130 people have been shot dead over the past two weeks in a series of brutally repetitive attacks on desperate crowds trying to access food handouts. Hundreds of others have been injured.
After 11 weeks of total siege and a continuing blockade, many in Gaza are so hungry they are still risking their lives to walk to centres run by the secretive US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the hope of getting some supplies.
The most vulnerable, including the sick, elderly people and those weakest from hunger, cannot even attempt the dangerous journey.
“This system does not intend to address hunger,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a post on social media.
“Aid deliveries & distribution must be at scale & safe. In Gaza, this can be done only through the United Nations including Unrwa. We have the expertise, the knowledge and community trust.”
Israel has attempted to shift most food distribution away from humanitarian organisations including UN agencies to GHF, a logistics startup that has never worked in a conflict zone at scale.
GHF hands out food at sites secured by armed guards and under the protection of the Israeli military. Shootings have targeted people travelling to the centres, not inside them or in their immediate vicinity.
The killings on Tuesday came hours before GHF began operations, and outside its site, the foundation said in a statement. It has asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to “do more” to keep people safe and suggested Palestinians hoping to get food without being shot dead should check social media for safety tips.
“It is vital that aid seekers stay on the dedicated passage and closely follow instructions from our Facebook posts,” the GHF statement said. The spokesperson did not respond to a question about how Gaza’s many people who no longer have regular access to electricity or internet connections should seek safety updates.
The Israeli military said it was aware of reports of injuries on Tuesday morning after troops fired “warning shots” towards “suspects” in the Wadi Gaza area whom its troops deemed a threat. “The warning shots were fired hundreds of metres from the aid distribution site,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the numbers of casualties reported in Gaza did not “align” with information on injuries from an initial IDF inquiry.
The 17 deaths on Tuesday morning brought to 144 the total number of Palestinians who local health authorities say have been killed trying to get food from GHF centres since they first opened.
Hours after that attack Israeli authorities deported Greta Thunberg and other activists who had attempted to sail to the territory on the Madleen yacht with food and medical aid.
All rejected the claim that they had entered Israel illegally, because Israeli forces seized the boat in international waters then brought them to an Israeli port by force.
In an apparent response to the huge amount of publicity generated by the Madleen even before it set sail, Israel’s foreign ministry on Monday denounced the crew as “celebrities” on a “selfie yacht”.
Although they were never expected to reach Gaza, whose shores are guarded by Israel’s navy, the ship intensified international focus on hunger in Gaza.
Israel has been under heavy pressure over hunger in Gaza, with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announcing that he had lifted the siege last month after warnings from longstanding allies that the “starvation crisis” there was damaging Israel’s international standing.
However, his government has said most food supplies allowed into the territory should go through the GHF.
The UN has been able to bring only limited supplies of flour into Gaza since Israel lifted the total siege three weeks ago, and most of that had been taken by starving Palestinians or looted by armed gangs before the UN could distribute it, the deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Monday.
Israel’s broader military campaign has made education impossible in Gaza, through damage and destruction to more than 90% of school and university buildings, according to a report from the UN’s independent commission of inquiry into the occupied Palestinian territories.
More than 658,000 children in Gaza have been prevented from attending school since the war began. Israeli forces have also destroyed more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza, including archaeological sites, a museum and the Great Omari mosque.
These attacks were part of a “widespread and relentless assault” on the Palestinian people in which Israel’s military had committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, the report found.
“We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, the chair of the commission.
“Israel’s targeting of the educational, cultural and religious life of the Palestinian people will harm the present generations and generations to come, hindering their right to self-determination.”
