GENEVA, July 2 — More than 170 non-governmental organisations called yesterday for a United States- and Israeli-backed food aid distribution scheme in Gaza to be dismantled over concerns that it is putting Palestine civilians at risk of death and injury.
More than 500 people have been killed in mass shootings near aid distribution centres or transport routes guarded by Israeli forces since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started operating in late May, said medical authorities in Gaza.
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a United Nations-led system that Israel says had let militants divert aid. The UN has called the plan “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules.
As of early afternoon in Geneva yesterday, where the joint declaration was released, 171 charities had signed on to the call for countries to press Israel to halt the GHF scheme and reinstate aid coordinated through the UN.
“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the statement said. Groups signing it included Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Amnesty International.
In response, the GHF told Reuters it had delivered more than 52 million meals in five weeks and said other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted”.
“Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza,” the GHF told Reuters.
Doctors Without Borders told reporters in an online press briefing yesterday that within the last month two of its small primary health centres had received 22 dead and 548 wounded people. Those who died had received fatal wounds to the chest and abdomen.
“They are not warning shots. They are shots directed towards the people,” said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, one of MSF’s emergency coordinators in Gaza.
In more than 50 per cent of the mass casualty incidents near food distribution sites, children have been shot and killed, said Rachel Cummings, humanitarian director for Save the Children in Gaza.
“Children have told us they want to die... to be with their mother or father who have been killed. They want to be in paradise because there is food and water,” said Cummings.
The Israeli military acknowledged on Monday that Palestine civilians have been harmed at aid distribution centres in Gaza, saying Israeli forces had been issued new instructions following what it called “lessons learnt”.
Israel has repeatedly said its forces operate near the centres to prevent the aid from falling into the hands of Palestinian Hamas militants.
— Reuters
