Global pressure forces Israel to allow aid into Gaza, but UN says it's not enough to prevent famine

Daily Maverick

2 days ago

After months of denying starvation and blaming Hamas, Israel is finally allowing some aid into Gaza. But the flow is limited, and aid groups say it barely scratches the surface of the unfolding famine.
As the images from Gaza of skeletal, starving Palestinian babies – amid reports of rising deaths from starvation and growing cases of malnutrition – shock the world, international pressure has forced Israel to start allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza, amounts which the UN reports are insufficient to prevent the famine.
Furthermore, an increasing number of reports from unexpected sources, including those involved in the questionable aid delivery on the ground, are disputing Israel's version of events, which has tried to cast the blame on Hamas and the UN.
In addition to repeatedly denying that they deliberately target Palestinian civilians, the Israeli authorities have also systematically denied that there is either starvation in Gaza or any food shortages.
Instead, they have blamed Hamas for looting aid convoys and the UN for refusing to cooperate with the much-discredited Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private security contractor manned by former US soldiers and security personnel in close coordination with the Israeli government.
The UN says the GHF is not delivering the limited amounts of food it distributes effectively and neither does the distribution meet minimum humanitarian levels.
The GHF operates only four aid distribution centres in southern Gaza as opposed to the previous 400 centres run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which covered the entire coastal territory. Furthermore, the GHF, together with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) encircling the GHF distribution points, has killed more than 1,000 Gazans as they desperately tried to get aid – in highly disputed circumstances.
UN World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain, wife of the late Republican senator John McCain, has been working on the ground. She denied that Hamas has been looting aid convoys in Gaza.
The New York Times, which has been accused of being biased towards Israel, interviewed several anonymous IDF officials who said in a recent article there was no systematic looting of Gaza aid by Hamas and the UN aid distribution system was the most effective.
Israel stopped UNRWA from delivering aid to Gaza and the West Bank after claiming that it was involved in the Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023.
After an investigation by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services, it was established that out of a Gaza UNRWA staff of 13,000, only a few were found to be possibly involved in the attack, but Israel had not provided sufficient evidence to pursue some of those possibly involved.
Critics say the real reason Tel Aviv has cracked down on UNRWA is the organisation's support of Palestinian rights and its economic, educational and medical support for Palestinian refugees, thereby making it hard for Israel to bury the Palestinian cause.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) recently completed an investigation into the attacks on aid convoys in Gaza and came to a similar conclusion to the The New York Times report. The analysis found that at least 44 of the 156 incidents where aid supplies were reported stolen or lost were 'either directly or indirectly' the result of Israeli military actions.
More damning, however, have been statements by US security personnel directly working with the GHF on the ground in Gaza.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar, a former US special forces veteran, was recruited to work for the GHF. He told the BBC he witnessed the IDF shooting at crowds of Palestinians, firing a main tank round into a car carrying civilians and firing mortars at crowds of hungry people waiting for food.
'In my entire career I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed starving population. I've never witnessed that in all the places I've been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza at the hands of the IDF and US contractors,' said Aguilar.
'Without question I witnessed war crimes by the [IDF], without a doubt. Using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, tank rounds into unarmed civilians is a war crime.'
Aguilar is not the first GHF employee to criticise its operations. Three weeks ago, another GHF employee, a security guard, told the BBC he witnessed colleagues opening fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had posed no threat.
There have been regular reports over the months of armed groups in Gaza opposed to Hamas operating under the watchful surveillance of the Israeli security forces, attacking and looting aid convoys.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently admitted to Israel arming and supporting criminal gangs accused of ties with Jihadist groups and involved in the looting of aid convoys in Gaza as a bulwark against Hamas, arguing that they were 'saving the lives of Israeli soldiers'.
Over the past almost 22 months of the conflict, Israel has repeatedly targeted aid convoys and aid premises, killing more than 400 aid workers and more than 1,300 health workers.
One of the more notorious incidents involving international staff was Israel's targeting of the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in April 2024, in which seven international and local staff members were killed.
Although Israel claimed it was a mistake, WCK founder José Andrés said it was not a mistake, but a systematic targeting.
Israel has also claimed not to target civilians and that those inadvertently killed were used by Hamas as human shields.
However, videos and reports have come out of Israeli soldiers deliberately using Palestinian civilians as human shields systematically not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank over the years.
British surgeon Dr Nick Maynard said that while working in Gaza he noticed a pattern of Israeli snipers not only targeting Palestinian civilians deliberately but also targeting different parts of teenage boys over different days. This followed earlier reports by other foreign doctors in Gaza, who said Israeli quadcopter drones targeted injured children lying on the ground. Other doctors said snipers had shot at the heads and hearts of children.
US surgeon Dr Mark Perlmutter spent several weeks in Gaza in 2024. He said the people he treated were civilians and he hadn't seen one combatant in the Nasser Hospital where he worked. The doctor went on to claim that Israeli snipers were deliberately shooting children in Gaza, France 24 reported. 'No child gets shot twice by mistake,' he said.
'Metadata proves it was real,' Perlmutter added, referencing a recent article in the The New York Times detailing the harrowing experiences of 65 doctors in Gaza such as himself, who commented on the precise shots aimed at hearts and heads.
In the interim two leading Israeli rights groups have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, joining other . DM