Chaos erupts on first day of US-backed aid distribution in Gaza after weeks of hunger
Thousands of Palestinians overran a newly established aid site in southern Gaza on Tuesday that is part of a controversial new Israeli- and US-approved aid distribution mechanism that began on Tuesday after months of blockade.
Videos from the distribution site in Tel al-Sultan, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), showed large crowds storming the facilities, tearing down some of the fencing and appearing to climb over barriers designed to control the flow of the crowd.
A diplomatic official called the chaos at the site 'a surprise to no one.'
An 11-week Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid has pushed the enclave's population of more than 2 million Palestinians towards famine and into a deepening humanitarian crisis, with the first resumption of humanitarian aid trickling into the besieged enclave last week.
The GHF acknowledged the pandemonium, saying 'the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties.' A security source said American security contractors on the ground did not fire any shots and that operations would resume at the site on Wednesday.
'It's a big failure that we warned against,' said Amjad al-Shawa, director of Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network.
'If Israel believes that through this blockade and emboldening starvation, which violates humanitarian principles, that this distribution method would work, they are mistaken.'
GHF said it has distributed about 8,000 food boxes totaling 462,000 meals in Gaza so far. They say the flow of meals will increase each day, with a goal of delivering food to 1.2 million – 60% of Gaza's population – by the end of the week.
The GHF claimed it began operating on Monday, but photos from the organization showed only a handful of people carrying boxes of aid, with pallets of boxes sitting at an otherwise empty lot.
GHF is readying three additional sites for the distribution of aid, two of which are in southern Gaza and one in central Gaza. All of the sites in the south are in an area that fell under a massive evacuation order one day earlier.
There are no distribution sites in northern Gaza – a point of criticism from many aid experts. The UN has previously warned that the fact the initial sites were only in southern and central Gaza could be seen as encouraging Israel's publicly stated goal of forcing 'the entire Gazan population' out of northern Gaza, as Defense Minister Israel Katz put it earlier this month.
'This mechanism appears practically unfeasible, incompatible with humanitarian principles and will create serious insecurity risks, all while failing to meet Israel's obligations under international law,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote earlier this month in a document obtained by CNN.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israel continues to deny it authorization to deliver food directly to families in Gaza, but they have thousands of trucks ready to enter the strip. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it was ready, with other humanitarian organizations, 'to distribute meaningful quantities of aid the moment we are allowed to.'
'The amount of supplies that were permitted to enter the Gaza Strip has been so minimal that they have not even reached families outside of one small area,' UNRWA said in a statement.
Israel and the US had declined to name the humanitarian organizations involved in the controversial new mechanism, but images from the GHF showed boxes labeled 'Rahma Worldwide,' a Michigan-based non-profit organization that says it provides 'aid and assistance to the most vulnerable communities in the world.'
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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