Bullets instead of aid in Gaza - World - Al-Ahram Weekly

Al-Ahram Weekly

5 days ago

As Israel continues its siege of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian residents are being shot by Israeli Occupation Forces as they queue for food
Starving Palestinians in Gaza are now experiencing severe malnutrition and are sharing advice on how to battle the effects of prolonged hunger as the Strip runs out of food.
'To avoid the widespread dizziness and headaches that everyone is suffering from, take some salt to compensate for sodium deficiency,' Fathi Sabbah, a Palestinian from Gaza, wrote on his Facebook page this week. Without food, people are experiencing faintness, severe fatigue, and muscle spasms, he explained.
After imposing a blanket ban on the entry of food, water, medicine, and fuel into Gaza since 2 March, the Israeli government is now openly starving the enclave's population of two million people.
Reports of mass fainting in the streets as famine sets in have signaled the beginning of a new stage in Israel's genocide in Gaza, where intentional famine is being documented and livestreamed for the world to see.
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), co-sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN children's agency UNICEF, and other agencies, 470,000 people in Gaza are now in IPC Phase 5 (catastrophic hunger), the worst category.
The entire population is enduring acute food insecurity across Gaza, with nearly one in every three people going without food for days at a time, according to the WFP.
'People are already starving, sick, and dying, while food and medicines are minutes away across the border,' said WHO Director‑General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The situation, he added, is 'one of the world's worst hunger crises' unfolding in real time.
Israel's blockade has triggered a collapse of food production and distribution and health services. Flour mills and bakeries have been heavily damaged or destroyed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), Gaza's largest wheat mill was bombed earlier in the war, and many bakeries cannot produce bread from whatever scarce flour reaches Gaza.
Water access has plummeted, with survivors reporting receiving as little as two to five litres per person per day, only a fraction of the UN's minimum standards. Over 80 per cent of households lack safe water, and sanitation systems are almost non‑existent, with one toilet for every 2,200 people in some shelters, making disease outbreaks inevitable.
Cases of respiratory infections, skin diseases, suspected meningitis, scabies, and hepatitis have all surged, amplified by malnutrition and overcrowding.
Palestinian survivors paint a picture of daily torment. Videos, photographs, and testimonies of starving people have all flooded social media for months, with live updates of Israeli's apocalyptic actions against the besieged population.
One mother speaking to Refugees International, a NGO, recounted feeding her children 'mouldy bread,' while others say they queue for hours only to leave empty‑handed, with nothing but water and tears.
'I don't know how our dreams changed and ended up as just a loaf of bread,' Omar Hamad, a pharmacist from Gaza, wrote on X earlier this week.
In response to international pressure, the US State Department launched the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in February, aiming to deliver food via a privately run joint Israeli operation starting on 26 May and bypassing UN-led systems.
Its funding is approximately $140 million per month, and it claims to have delivered 75 million meals.
But GHF has become one of the most controversial ingredients in Israel's Gaza starvation crisis. During its brief operations, over 615 deaths were recorded by the UN Office for (OHCHR) at or near GHF distribution sites, primarily in Israeli-designated military zones in southern Gaza, as of early July.
At least 70 per cent of aid-related fatalities have been traced to GHF sites, which survivors describe as 'death traps' for aid seekers.
These include deaths in stampedes and shootings. On 16 July, 20 Palestinians died by crushing or stabbing at a GHF site in Khan Yunis, with earlier incidents seeing over 400 people killed during chaotic aid distributions.
The daily shooting of aid seekers by mercenaries and the IOF were cited by witnesses.
Ahmed Abu Sido, a Palestinian in Gaza, described his near-death experience while attempting to procure food in the Zikim Crossing distribution point in the south of the Strip.
'Hunger was the only reason that compelled me and my siblings to go there. We were unable to stand on our own two feet,' he wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday.
Abu Sido said that '99 per cent' of the crowds that went to Zikim were 'dizzy' owing to the lack of food but had had to walk a total of ten km to the aid centre and back in the scorching heat.
The moment word spread that the aid trucks had arrived, the shooting began. 'Everyone ducked down, and I heard the whistle of bullets flying next to my head. A 20-year-old barefoot girl next to me broke down in tears and started screaming, 'I don't want to die, take me home!''
Later, he saw an aid truck that typically delivers flour carrying a Palestinian man who had been killed. Both his hands and feet were tied. 'He was headless,' Abu Sido wrote.
Abu Sido saw the body of a 12-year-old boy lying on a carriage pulled by a donkey. His mother and sisters were crying as they hugged the lifeless body. 'He told them to wait while he went to get some flour because it was too dangerous. He was starving when he was martyred and never even got the flour,' Abu Sido said.
'I decided to return home after choosing my life over a bag of flour,' he wrote. 'I cursed the centre and humanity, and I said to myself that my life is more precious.'
In what has been described as Gaza's deadliest aid‑seeking incident, IOF troops opened fire on crowds queuing near the Zikim Crossing on 20 July, killing between 67 and 93 Palestinians waiting for UN aid trucks.
Among the dead were dozens of children. Some reports say 71 children have already perished due to hunger and a lack of medical care.
The WFP condemned the violence, saying its convoy was targeted. Health officials say hundreds more were wounded, and the death toll from aid‑related casualties in recent months is now believed to exceed 875 people.
The scenes underscore growing desperation: massive crowds, collapsing order, and lethal force met without safe humanitarian structures.
Reports from eyewitnesses and humanitarian agencies recount heaps of injured people and survivors, saying that the aid distributions resembled military operations more than relief.
The sites are fenced and guarded by private security and Israeli troops. Palestinians must pass through screenings and identity checks in scenes likened to checkpoints, fueling desperation and fear.
GHF relies on private security contractors, often US-based firms, to manage logistics and crowd control, raising serious concern over the safety of aid seekers.
The UN, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and over 170 other NGOs have condemned the GHF, citing violations of neutrality, impartiality, and safety. Doctors Without Borders described GHF distributions as 'slaughter masquerading as aid.'
Investigations by the UK channel Sky News found that many distributions were announced less than 30 minutes in advance, often via last-minute Facebook posts. Locations were inaccurate or in combat zones and supplies frequently ran out within nine minutes of opening, it said.
Some distribution centres are 10 to 20 km away from major population centres, forcing refugees to walk through militarised zones to reach them. Only the strongest make it.
UN aid coordinators have refused to work with the GHF, accusing Israel of using the organisation to politicise humanitarian assistance and sideline established UN‑led systems. Israel has banned main UN humanitarian agencies like the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA that have been supplying Gaza with essential aid for decades from operating in the Strip.
'There is no case since World War II of starvation that has been so minutely designed and controlled,' UK famine expert Alex de Waal said.
This is entirely man-made starvation, he told the Qatari news channel Aljazeera, 'and every stage has been predicted, and action could have been taken by Israel and the international community to prevent what is happening. Those steps haven't been taken.'
Groups including Swiss NGO TRIAL International warn that the GHF leadership may be criminally liable for aiding war crimes or crimes against humanity, especially if sites were used to force population displacement southward.
Human rights attorneys highlight the pattern of luring starving civilians into zones where they become targets under the guise of aid.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini called GHF operations 'an abomination' and a 'death trap costing more lives than it saves.'
International humanitarian agencies have repeatedly called for Israel to open all border crossings and allow UN-led agencies to deliver aid based on need, not political alignment, and to declare a ceasefire to enable safe distribution and further the prevent collapse of Gaza's basic services.
They have also called for suspending GHF operations pending independent investigation to ensure adherence to humanitarian principles.
UN experts have been raising the alarm over the spread of famine in Gaza since July last year.
'With the death of the first child from malnutrition… it becomes irrefutable that famine has taken hold,' the experts said in a statement a year ago following the death of two children from hunger and malnutrition in June 2024.
'We declare that Israel's intentional and targeted starvation campaign… has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.'
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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