The United Nations described the images from an Israeli aid distribution point in Gaza as " catastrophic," while Gazan tribes asserted that the aid mechanism had failed due to the exclusion of international organizations. Hamas also confirmed this, stating that "shooting at the hungry confirms the failure of the dubious aid mechanism."
While the residents of the Gaza Strip are suffering from deliberate starvation that has paved the way for forced displacement, according to the United Nations, which stated that “Israel has pushed 2.4 million Palestinians into starvation by closing the Gaza Strip crossings since March 2 to humanitarian aid, especially food.” Tel Aviv has excluded the United Nations and international relief organizations, and tasked the Israeli-American “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” which is rejected by the United Nations, with distributing very meager aid in the southern areas of the Gaza Strip, in order to force the Palestinians to evacuate and empty the north.
But the Israeli plan failed under the weight of famine, after desperate Palestinian crowds stormed an aid distribution center in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli army opened fire on them, wounding several, according to the Gaza media office, which attributed the chaos to "the company's own mismanagement."
mocking famine
Despite the humiliating scenes of people waiting to receive aid, being lined up in humiliating lines, and the starving being killed, one video clip shows a masked person, an employee at the aid distribution area, making mocking gestures toward the crowds, while thousands of Palestinians stand behind fences waiting to enter the aid point.
Footage from an aid distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation, which is supported by Israel and the United States, sparked widespread anger on social media. Social media users likened the scenes to images taken in Nazi concentration camps.
A photo circulating on social media shows thousands of Palestinians waiting behind fences and barbed wire inside closed sections, bringing to mind famous images from the Nazi Auschwitz death camp in Poland in 1945.
These images came after the US- and Israeli-backed organization announced the start of humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians flooded the southern Gaza Strip at once, leading to widespread chaos.
Security personnel from the American company at the aid point fired into the air to disperse thousands of Palestinians who had been waiting for hours for a food parcel. Thousands of Palestinians who had come to the area seeking assistance, having traveled kilometers, were forced to leave empty-handed in panic.
The government media office in Gaza said Tuesday that the Israeli army killed three Palestinians and wounded 46 others in a massacre targeting the hungry inside so-called "aid distribution centers" in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Washington avoids commenting on the massacre of the hungry
In a related development, US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce evaded press questions about Israeli soldiers opening fire on Palestinians who entered a distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation in the southern Gaza Strip, blaming Hamas for the failure to deliver aid.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Bruce held Hamas responsible for the scenes unfolding regarding food distribution in Gaza, even though Israel is the one closing the crossings to the accumulated humanitarian aid and preventing it from entering the Strip.
Bruce claimed that "food parcels organized by the Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation, the first significant food aid in a long time, have begun reaching Palestinians," describing this as "good news." She explained that approximately 8,000 food aid parcels have been distributed and that aid distribution will continue.
Bruce avoided answering questions about Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinians who entered the Gaza Relief Foundation's distribution point, saying only, "Ask the Israeli army."
Local and international criticism
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday that images showing hungry Palestinians storming a newly established Israeli aid distribution point in Gaza are "a tragedy, nothing short of tragic."
Dujarric explained that the United Nations and its partners have "a detailed, principled, and operationally sound plan, supported by member states, to deliver aid to the needy population" in the besieged enclave.
In response to Israeli allegations that Hamas members are diverting UN aid, Dujarric said, "We are distributing aid based on a system that has worked for a long time: feed the hungry, provide water to the thirsty, and provide medicine to the sick."
He added, "No system is absolutely foolproof, but I believe that halting all aid to Gaza based on arbitrary accusations merely imposes more suffering on the people of Gaza."
For its part, Hamas asserted that Tuesday's incident at the aid distribution center in the southern Gaza Strip proves the failure of the "suspicious" Israeli-American mechanism, emphasizing that it has become a trap that puts the lives of civilians at risk.
The movement said in a statement that "the scenes of thousands of our people rushing under the pressure of hunger into the center designated for the implementation of the occupation's mechanism for distributing aid, and the accompanying shooting at them, confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt the failure of this suspicious mechanism, which has turned into a trap that endangers the lives of civilians and is being exploited to impose security control over the Gaza Strip under the guise of aid."
She added, "This plan was specifically designed to marginalize the role of the United Nations and its agencies. It aims to further the occupation's political and military objectives and control individuals, rather than assist them. This constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law."
She stressed that "the so-called safe distribution sites established in buffer zones are nothing more than a forced model of booby-trapped humanitarian corridors, through which those affected are deliberately humiliated and aid is turned into a tool of blackmail as part of a systematic plan for starvation and subjugation, amidst the continued blanket ban on the entry of aid through official crossings, in clear violation of international law."
In a related development, Hosni al-Mughni, head of the Supreme Committee for Tribal Affairs in the Gaza Strip, said Tuesday that the failure of the Israeli-American mechanism for distributing aid in the Strip stemmed from the exclusion of international humanitarian organizations and their replacement with security companies.
In a statement, Al-Mughni pointed out that Palestinian clans and families "resisted the American company's attempts to implement its plan by exploiting the population," stressing that Palestinians "stood like a rock" in the face of the "starvation engineering conspiracy." He said, "The mechanism aimed to engineer the starvation of our Palestinian people through humiliation and targeting, and it has resulted in a state of chaos that is a natural result of the targeting and starvation process, and the malicious attempts that the mechanism is trying to achieve through displacing citizens."
The singer added, "The failure of the American plan was expected, as it excluded the international system operating in the humanitarian sector for more than seven decades, and brought to mind the experience of the Blackwater companies, which tortured the Iraqi people under the pretext of freedom and food, and is attempting to repeat the experience in Gaza."
Netanyahu is trying to prove otherwise.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Tuesday evening that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been arrested and photographed naked, claiming that they show no signs of Israel's systematic starvation policy in the besieged enclave for 600 days.
In an attempt to justify Israel's starvation policy against civilians in Gaza, Netanyahu said, "We take thousands of prisoners, photograph them, and ask them to take off their shirts to ensure they are not wearing explosive belts."
Defying the photos, videos, and reports from the United Nations and international relief organizations, Netanyahu said, "The lie is that we are pursuing a policy of starvation in Gaza."
Netanyahu attempted to downplay the failure of a US- and Israeli-backed organization to distribute humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, claiming a "temporary loss of control." He continued, "Today, several incidents occurred (during aid distribution), and there was a temporary loss of control, but we have regained control of the situation," he claimed.
He went on to claim that "Hamas is trying to steal aid packages, and we are securing them." However, Avigdor Lieberman, head of the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party, said via Twitter that "the chaos at the humanitarian aid distribution center in Gaza is a direct result of a failed government."
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a war of genocide in Gaza, including killing, starvation, destruction, and forced displacement, ignoring all international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.
The US-backed genocide left approximately 177,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing. Hundreds of thousands were displaced and famine killed many, including children. For 18 years, Israel has been besieging Gaza, leaving approximately 1.5 million Palestinians homeless after the genocidal war destroyed their homes.
