At least five Palestinians were killed and 46 others were wounded when Israeli forces opened fire at aid seekers in Rafah in southern Gaza Tuesday, May 27. Tens of thousands of Palestinians had flocked to the U.S. and Israeli-run aid distribution center with the hope of finally receiving food and supplies amid a three-month blockade on the entry of aid imposed by Israel. The incident has been deemed a massacre by analysts.
“What happened today in Rafah is a deliberate massacre and a full-fledged war crime, committed in cold blood against civilians weakened by over 90 days of siege-induced starvation,” the Gaza media office was quoted saying by the Quds News Network.
Israeli media had attempted to claim that Israeli forces fired into the air in response to people attempting to climb over the fences at the aid distribution center, but this was countered and refuted by the local media in Gaza, which reported that Israeli forces fired at people directly. The incident has taken on even greater significance due to the dire situation in the besieged territory where, according to UN experts, millions in Gaza are on the verge of starvation due to lack of adequate food, water, and electricity. On May 20, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher had warned that nearly 14,000 babies in Gaza could die if no aid was provided in the next 48 hours.
On May 19, Israel allowed nine trucks of aid into Gaza as global pressure was mounting, yet even after allowing the limited amount of food aid Israel has refused to restore electricity and water supplies.
In response to the broad condemnation of this blockade, the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), created jointly by the U.S. and Israel to replace UNRWA and other aid agencies working in the region, set up an aid distribution center in Rafah.
This maneuver was part of Israel’s attempt to control the mechanism of aid distribution, along with the U.S., justifying it by saying that the GHF would prevent any waste of the aid or the “looting of aid” by Hamas.
Israel has repeatedly accused UNRWA and other aid agencies working in Gaza of collaborating with Hamas and letting it “steal aid.” Israeli forces have deliberately targeted aid workers, killing hundreds of them since October 2023 and has insisted that UNRWA is infiltrated by Hamas.
Weaponizing aid
The aid delivery mechanism adopted by GHF has been criticized by the UN and other aid agencies. At the Rafah GHF center people were squeezed into the overcrowded queues inside iron cages for hours.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson of UN secretary general António Guterres, described the scenes from Rafah as “heartbreaking.”
Talking to reporters on Wednesday in Tokyo, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA head said that what we saw on Tuesday were the “shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.”
Lazzarini claimed that “the crisis in Gaza cannot be addressed by weaponizing humanitarian assistance, to apply political and military pressure.”
Critics have also questioned the location of the GHF aid distribution centers, which are deliberately placed in the southern parts of Gaza. They accuse Israel of forcing Gazans to move to the south for aid, with the intention of permanently preventing them from returning to the north.
Palestine Chronicle reported that Palestinians in Gaza have firmly rejected the U.S.-Israeli plan to weaponize aid mechanisms. They described it as an attempt to “deceive, manipulate and militarize humanitarian efforts” and demanded Israel let the UN and other aid agencies do their work of aid delivery.
Reports have also circulated that the aid distributed by Israel and the U.S. was seized from international humanitarian organizations which have been barred from entering aid into the strip.
Meanwhile, Israeli massacres of Palestinians in other parts of Gaza continue. At least eight people from the family of journalist Osama al-Arbid were killed when his house in Al-Saftawi in northern Gaza was bombed on Wednesday morning. Several other people were wounded in the attack. Al-Jazeera reported the total number of Palestinians killed since Wednesday morning is 15.
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed or missing and over 123,000 have been injured since Israel started its war on Gaza in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza strip.