On Sunday, at least 31 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at the site of a food distribution centre in Rafah, Gaza, according to witnesses. On Monday, another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at the same site, according to health officials and a witness. And on Tuesday, 27 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire again, say Gaza officials.
The incidents have intensified criticism of the new system for distributing supplies in Gaza, run by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) rather than by the UN or well-established aid organisations. The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Tuesday that Palestinians in Gaza now faced an impossible choice: “Die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available.” The attacks on civilians, he added, constituted a war crime.
What do we know about the incidents in recent days?
All three incidents unfolded in the same area, near the al-Alam roundabout, about 1km from the GHF distribution centre in Rafah. The Israeli military is not present on the site itself – where armed American contractors are in charge – but it controls the surrounding areas.
On Sunday, rescuers and witnesses said Israeli forces opened fire as people congregated before going to pick up food parcels. Israel denied firing “near or within” the site, but an Israeli military source later acknowledged that “warning shots were fired towards several suspects” about 1km away. The GHF denied that there were any “injuries, fatalities or incidents” during its operations. Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that 31 people were killed, with another 176 wounded.
On Monday, the Israeli military again acknowledged firing warning shots towards “suspects who advanced toward the troops and posed a threat to them”. Three people were killed, said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and dozens more injured.
On Tuesday, witnesses said that the shooting started at about 4am local time, as crowds started to gather in the hope of getting food before the centre ran out for the day. Mohammed al-Shaer told AFP that “the Israeli army fired shots into the air, then began shooting directly at the people”, with a helicopter and drones present as the crowd approached a barrier separating them from the Israeli forces.
The IDF said “suspects” failed to retreat after warning fire and “additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects who advanced towards the troops”. A statement claimed that they were not following “designated access routes” to the GHF site. The GHF says civilians should arrive via a single coastal road, a route that one expert told the BBC was neither “safe nor effective”.
Local health officials put the death toll at 27 so far, including at least three children. Mohammed Saqr, the head of nursing at Nasser hospital, which received the bodies, told the Guardian that they had shrapnel wounds which appeared consistent with being targeted by tanks or artillery.
What do these events suggest about how the GHF system is working?
Accounts from the scene suggest that besides the conduct of the Israeli forces, there are other factors exacerbating the situation.
Food is reportedly running out very early each day, adding to the chaos as people desperately try to secure supplies for themselves and their families. Even if all of the GHF sites were opened, large numbers of people needing support would be congregating in a very few places; with only one site up and running since Friday and only one access route allowed, that effect is worsened.
Then there is the sheer physical difficulty of the journey for those living further away. “It takes three or four hours to reach the distribution point from here,” said Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network in Gaza City.
“There are tens of thousands of people waiting to get a very limited amount of food parcels, and so there is a rush. There is no system; they just open the gate and tell people to go. The mechanism excludes older people, women with children, the sick, people with disabilities.”
Is the amount of food being distributed adequate?
GHF says it has distributed just over 7m meals so far. It says that it will continue to increase its operations in the days ahead. But on Tuesday night it said that all of its distribution centres would be closed on Wednesday for “update, organisation, and efficiency improvement work”. The Israeli military said that while the sites were closed, the areas leading to them would be considered “combat zones”.
The fact that food is running out so early each day is testament to how badly supply is outstripped by desperate demand. As of 12 May, almost all of the population of about 2.1 million were facing acute hunger, according to Unicef; one in five were facing starvation, and about 71,000 children and 17,000 mothers needed urgent treatment for acute malnutrition.
Is there any reason to hope that the process will improve?
While the GHF has sought to emphasise the amount of food it has distributed so far, there are reasons to be sceptical that it will soon be able to start running the sites in a more orderly way.
Its founding executive director, Jake Wood, quit last week, saying that it could not operate in a way that followed “humanitarian principles”; on Tuesday, he was replaced by the Rev Dr Johnnie Moore. Donald Trump appointed Moore as a commissioner for international religious freedom, but Moore has no apparent experience of complex aid operations. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that Boston Consulting Group, which helped design the programme, had withdrawn its team working in Tel Aviv. Sources close to the operation told the Post that “it would be difficult for the foundation to continue to function without the consultants who helped create it”.
As the situation worsens, Israel is facing growing diplomatic pressure from the UK, other European countries and Canada. But the Trump administration continues to offer its unflagging support, and is likely to veto a UN security council resolution demanding unfettered access for aid operations on Wednesday.
In those circumstances, it is difficult to see how the situation on the ground will improve. “People have no option but to keep coming,” Shawa said. “They will be back tomorrow in search of food. But they will pay a price to get it, and the price is in lives.”
