Good morning. If the new system for distributing supplies in Gaza is supposed to be an adequate replacement for the major aid organisations that were previously in place,it has got off to an inauspicious start.
On Tuesday, after the first food point run by the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a non-government organisation (NGO) with Israeli support that uses US-based contractors – opened in Rafah, Israeli forces stationed at the perimeter opened fire. Panicked civilians fled the scene, most without the food they came for; dozens of people were injured, and at least one died.
Even before the disaster of its initial operation, the GHF’s executive director resigned, warning that it could not be an independent, impartial provider of aid. Meanwhile, urgent warnings continue that children and elderly people are dying of starvation, and hundreds of thousands more are on the brink of famine. Last night, it emerged thatfour people had diedafter the UN’s World Food Programme said “hordes of hungry people” had broken into a food supply warehouse in central Gaza.
Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s Middle East correspondentEmma Graham-Harrison, is about what happened in Rafah – and what it suggests about whether the new plan is up to the task, or even intended to attempt it. Here are the headlines.
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As word spread on Tuesday that one of the distribution points used by the new body responsible for distributing food, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), had opened, tens of thousands of people headed there. Crowds of desperate people broke through fences around the site, and Israeli forces started shooting. While those were later claimed by Israel to be “warning shots”, at least one civilian died and 48 others were injured, many with gunshot wounds.
That outcome points to the very reason that traditional aid operations do not use armed security or work with belligerent forces – and, perhaps, the dangerous inexperience of those behind the new system: it is hard to build networks of trust in communities under attack, and easy to retreat behind guns.
“When they say ‘warning shots’, it’s not clear where they aimed that gunfire, but even if they fired into the air over the crowd, those bullets have to come down,” Emma said. “This is what happens when you use a dangerous, untested method at a time of extreme crisis.”
Did this sort of thing happenunder the old system?
While convoys have been targeted by armed groups, and desperate civilians looting to feed their families, the distribution networks of major aid groups and the UN — which are closely audited and take food into communities rather than concentrating it in a few places — have held up well during the war.
“There has never been an incident like this at a UN or humanitarian operation’s distribution position,” Emma said. The worst previous incident, known by Palestinians as the flour massacre, sawat least 112 people killedand 760 injured when desperate crowds gathered as aid trucks arrived in Gaza City; there were conflicting accounts of whether most of the victims were shot by Israeli troops or died in an ensuing stampede.
But even that horrifying case was “not about a UN or humanitarian distribution operation degenerating into chaos,” Emma said. “It happened as a convoy arrived, at a time of desperation when northern Gaza was under the most intense siege.”
Many of the attacks on convoys have happened as trucks travel out of border areas under Israeli control and cross “no man’s land” before they get to areas where aid groups can operate safely. “Given the Israeli forces have extensive control of Gaza, and have a legal obligation as an occupying power to ensure civilians can get food, you might think they should be able to maintain security to the point of distribution,” Emma noted.
Meanwhile, Palestinian attempts to protect aid from attacks have been targeted by Israeli strikes. Israel says that the police force in Gaza are legitimate targets because the force reports to the Hamas government.One such incidentsaw six members of a security team killed last week.
How effective is the new system at getting food to Palestinians?
The new arrangements appear much less effective at getting supplies to those most desperately in need. One key reason for that is that “instead of bringing food to people, they are telling people to come to the food,” Emma said: supplies are being distributed at static distribution points in boxes weighing up to 20kg that are meant to feed “5.5 people for 3.5 days”. “If someone is on foot and severely malnourished or elderly, how are they supposed to reach the centre or carry a box like that with them?”
Israel has repeatedly claimed that this approach is necessary to stop supplies being requisitioned by Hamas. “But once people leave the distribution points, that could just as easily be happening now,” Emma said. In any case, the UN says its closely monitored supply chains are secure, and Israel has never provided any evidence to back up its claims, or even offered statistics on the scale of the alleged problem.
Quite apart from the logistical particulars, there is a much more fundamental question: whether the supplies now being allowed in are anything like enough to tackle the hunger crisis. Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza – where many people were already living in a state of severe food insecurity – on 2 March; the UN estimates that about 600 trucks are needed each day to begin addressing the problem. Since the total siege was eased earlier this month, Israel says that 1,050 have entered in total.
The GHF said on Tuesday that it had distributed 462,000 meals – enough for just over 50,000 people, about 2% of Gaza’s population, for three days. While the operation is now meant to scale up, that is a vanishingly small number against the scale of the need. With those numbers in mind, Emma said, “it is difficult to see this as anything other than performative. It is not even the beginning of a solution.”
What other reasons might there be for the change?
Benjamin Netanyahuhas insistedthat warnings of famine are merely “the current fad, the current lie” – although Israeli officials are saidto take a different viewin private. Instead, Netanyahu has framed the operation as “a diplomatic issue”.
With media and even diplomats kept out of Gaza, and Palestinians treated as unreliable sources in parts of the media, humanitarian workers have often provided compelling eyewitness evidence of the human cost of Israel’s assault on the territory. “There are those who see this operation as a way to remove those independent observers,” Emma said.
The darkest fears about the attempt to concentrate food supplies in a few sites — forcing civilians to cluster around them - are connected to the fact that the locations are concentrated in the south, and are likely to mean Palestinians elsewhere will be again displaced in search of food.
Some humanitarian organisations see that as a prelude to mass deportation – a step backed by influential Israeli cabinet ministers which, when taken together with the scale of the violence visited upon Palestinians in Gaza since the war began, would strengthen the case that Israel is committing genocide. Earlier this month, the far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrichsaid that“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to … the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.”
Who is running the programme?
When the new system was announced earlier this month, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel,said thatit was “wholly inaccurate” to call it an Israeli plan. Of Tuesday’s operation, Emma said that she had been told that Palestinians were handing out the supplies, and photos showed some stamped with the logo of charities already operating in Gaza.
But even when the scheme was announced, there were reports that the Israeli government was heavily involved in its creation. And on Saturday, the New York Times reported that the plan wasfirst conceived in December 2023by an Israeli group with close ties to the government, and that from the beginning it was viewed at least in part as a way to undermine Hamas.
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Mainstream humanitarian groups and the UN have condemned the new system as incompatible with the basic principles of aid distribution because of the role played by the Israeli government – and now Jake Wood, the executive director of the GHF,has resigned, saying that the operation could not fulfil its mission in a way that adhered to “humanitarian principles” – the same objection the humanitarian community has been raising for months.
“You’d call it a farce if it wasn’t a tragedy,” Emma said. “They do not have any heavyweight aid figures involved – and yet they are supposedly the solution to one of the worst and most complex humanitarian crises that the world has seen in years.”
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And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
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