By punishing the daytime heat, thousands of Palestinians drool through the fences, pierced the packed crowds and reached life-saving supplies, baring the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe given to Gaza with three months of Israeli aid.
Israeli military shootings rattled in the background Tuesday in the overhead fuss of military helicopters, with desperate crowds struggling to reach the food distribution point in the state where Israel was wrapped on the first day of the operation.
Television footage from Rafa in southern Gaza showed long-term people were concentrated in a large open field stacked with aid packages brought to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) through a wired corridor. They were then seen demolishly hungry Palestinians, including women and children, demolish the fence as people were forced to force them towards the distribution point of the GHF.
“We were dying of starvation. We have to feed the children we want to eat. What else can we do? I can do something to feed them,” the Palestinian father told Al Jazeera.
“We saw people running, and even if it was a risk and it was scary, we followed them. But fear is not worse than starvation.”
After thousands of Palestinians stormed the aid distribution centre, Israeli forces said their forces did not direct gunfires at them, but rather fired warning shots in areas outside. In a statement, it said that control over the situation will be established and the distribution of aid will continue as planned.
However, Gaza officials accused Israel of not managing aid amid widespread hunger and relentless bombing of civilians, including children.
“What happened today is conclusive evidence of the failure of the occupation to fail to manage a humanitarian crisis that was intentionally created through hunger, siege and bombing policies,” the government media office in Gaza said in a statement after the mayhem.
GHF, a foundation supported by the US and supported by Israel, has arrived in Gaza despite allegations that the new group has no experience or ability to bring relief to more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.
The United Nations and aid groups say the organizations do not adhere to humanitarian principles and will help drive people further out of their homes as Palestinians move to receive aid from a limited number of distribution sites.
“A reckless, inhumane plan”
United Nations spokesman Stephen Dujaric said the thousands of Palestinians raiding the aid scene were “courtly”;
“We and our partners have detailed, principled operational sound plans supported by Member States to obtain assistance to our desperate population,” he told reporters. “We continue to emphasize that the meaningful scale of humanitarian operations is essential to stem hunger and meet the needs of all civilians wherever they are.”
Chaos highlighted a staggering level of hungry Gaza. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Stages Report, 1.95 million people (93% of the enclave’s population) are facing acute food shortages.
Aid groups have been warning for months that starvation in Gaza has been used by Israel as a weapon of war.
“This is not how aid will be provided,” Ahmed Beiram, a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera, describing Rafa’s scene as “an inevitable consequence of a reckless and inhumane plan.”
“These are scenes we’ve been warning us all literally for the whole month. It spread the confusion. That’s the result,” he said.
“I think the best thing we can do now is cancel and reverse this plan, and we have professional humanitarians from the UN and NGOs doing our job. [It’s a] Very easy decision: Leave the gate open and open. ”
Formed in February through a back-channel meeting between Israeli-related officials and business figures, Switzerland-based GHF has become a leading distributor of Israeli aid. Meanwhile, Israel has blocked the United Nations and other international organizations from bringing assistance.
Despite being promoted as a neutral, GHF’s close ties with Israel and the United States have prompted widespread condemnation. This week, the previous head suddenly resigned, citing his inability to support the core humanitarian principles of “neutrality, equity and independence.”
According to a report by The New York Times, the GHF has emerged from “an individual meeting of like-minded officials, military personnel and businessmen with close ties to the Israeli government.”
Israel says that its power is not involved in the physical distribution of aid, but it supports the use of a system of biometric screening for biometric recipients, including facial recognition. Palestinians fear it is another Israeli tool of surveillance and oppression.
Critics also warn that the GHF structure and concentration of aid in southern Gaza could help depopulate northern Gaza, as planned by Israeli forces.
“This is definitely not enough.”
Previously, the UN-LED distribution network operated around 400 sites across the strip, but GHF has set up only four “mega sites” for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza.
In Deia El Bala in central Gaza, Khoudary, behind Al Jazeera, reported that many of the food plots being handed out were insufficient to keep families alive.
Khoudary described a typical food box with 4kg (8.8lb) of flour, two bags of pasta, two cans of fava beans, a pack of tea bags and a few biscuits. Other foods contained small amounts of lentils and soup.
The GHF distributed around 8,000 food boxes on Tuesday, claiming it was equivalent to 462,000 meals, but Khoudary said the ration would barely maintain one family for a long time.
“This is definitely not enough, not enough for all the humiliation that Palestinians are experiencing to receive these food plots,” she said.
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