Capping off all the other horrors in wartime Gaza is the food-distribution situation that has prevailed since late May. Famished Palestinian civilians must approach one of very few aid-distribution locations under the auspices of the Israeli and United States governments. A shocking number of civilians seeking aid have reportedly been shot dead by Israeli soldiers or shot at by U.S. contractors on their way to these sites. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in this scramble for sustenance since May 26.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke the last cease-fire in the Gaza war on March 18 by launching air strikes that killed more than 400 Palestinians in 36 hours, a reported 183 of them children. He had also imposed a total blockade on March 2, allowing no aid whatsoever into the Strip from March until late May. The resulting situation was untenable. But the Israeli government did not trust any of the international institutions with experience in humanitarian-aid distribution, so together with its U.S. backers, it cooked up an alternative: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit registered in Delaware and funded with $30 million from the Trump administration. According to one report, GHF has billed itself as seeking, among other aims, to “facilitate President Trump’s vision” for the Gaza Strip. Trump has said a variety of things about that vision, but one prospect he has articulated includes the forced removal of all Palestinians from the territory and its transformation into a “Riviera” for “international people.”
According to The Washington Post, some for-profit companies are behind GHF, including McNally Capital, a Chicago private-equity firm. Among the entities initially involved with the group, some have since withdrawn, including the Boston Consulting Group. The foundation’s initial head, Jake Wood, resigned on account of humanitarian concerns. GHF is now run by Johnnie Moore Jr., a pro-Israel evangelical activist and former aide to Jerry Falwell, and John Acree, a former USAID official.
GHF began operations on May 26 in the south of Gaza, near Rafah. Since then, it has operated four main aid-distribution centers (compare this to the more than 400 that the UN and other traditional aid agencies once ran). The aid boxes themselves have been described by Palestinians as woefully inadequate as Gaza continues its slide toward outright famine.
The food-distribution points have practically become shooting galleries. Israeli troops told reporters from the newspaper Haaretz that they had been ordered to open fire on Palestinians with live ammunition as a means of crowd control. The newspaper quoted one soldier as describing the zones as a “killing field.” The report singled out Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of Division 252, which operates in northern Gaza. Vach reportedly told his men that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” Some suggested that using live fire to disperse crowds in northern Gaza, for fear they would rush UN aid trucks, was Vach’s policy more than that of the Israeli military command or government. But reports have also circulated about U.S. contractors deliberately shooting Palestinians and boasting about direct hits. Israel refuses to allow outside journalists into Gaza, making these and other related accounts difficult to confirm or disprove.
What is indisputable is that GHF has an effective monopoly on delivering humanitarian aid into an ever more desperate Gaza Strip. Virtually all of the traditional distributors of aid have been barred by the Israeli authorities. And by most accounts, the results are ghastly. The UN relays that a third of the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza go days without eating, and credible reports suggest that infants and the elderly are dying of malnutrition and dehydration—according to one issued by a group of international nonprofits, more than 100 people have died of hunger, including 80 children. Agence France-Presse says that its local journalists are now in danger of imminent death from starvation. Israel claims that it is allowing ample food, water, and medicine into the Strip, but if that’s the case, the supplies are apparently not reaching those who need them most.
Much of the world is appalled by these conditions. On Monday, 30 governments, many friendly to Israel, plus the European Union, demanded an end to the war and condemned “the drip feeding of aid” to the Palestinians in Gaza whose suffering, the group noted, had “reached new depths.” More than 100 aid agencies have signed a letter demanding that Israel allow additional food, water, medicine, and other supplies into Gaza immediately.
Far from ameliorating Gazans’ suffering, GHF has instead established a system that presents them with an impossible dilemma. Palestinians are drawn in desperation to four centers, where they must risk their lives in order to gain the supplies they need to live. Many also walk away disappointed but uninjured. There is no evidence that GHF, its founders, or its backers intended to create death traps rather than alternative distribution centers. But for many weeks, this is how the sites have functioned, and GHF’s response has been to simply carry on as before.
What GHF may have begun inadvertently, it now perpetuates without correction and with full awareness. Palestinians face a Hobson’s choice between starvation and the real possibility of being shot down for no intelligible reason. For that there is no excuse—and quite possibly criminal culpability.
