Palestinians Storm US-Backed Aid Centers Despite Concerns over Checks
Thousands of Palestinians on Tuesday stormed into sites where aid was being distributed by a foundation backed by the US and Israel, with desperation for food overcoming concern about biometric and other checks Israel said it would employ.
By late afternoon on Tuesday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to about 462,000 meals, after an almost three-month Israeli blockade of the war-devastated enclave.
In the southern city of Rafah, which is under full Israeli army control, thousands of people including women and children, some on foot or in donkey carts, flocked towards one of the distribution sites to receive food packages.
Footage, some of which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed lines of people walking through a wired-off corridor and into a large open field where aid was stacked. Later, images shared on social media showed large parts of the fence torn down as people jostled their way onto the site.
Israel and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said, without providing evidence, that Hamas had tried to block civilians from reaching the aid distribution center.
Hamas denied the accusation.
"The real cause of the delay and collapse in the aid distribution process is the tragic chaos caused by the mismanagement of the same company operating under the Israeli occupation's administration in those buffer zones," Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, told Reuters.
"This has led to thousands of starving people, under the pressure of siege and hunger, storming distribution centers and seizing food, during which Israeli forces opened fire," he added.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein wrote on X that 8,000 "food packages" were delivered to Palestinians on Tuesday, the first day of what he described as an American initiative.
Some of the recipients showed the content of the packages, which included some rice, flour, canned beans, pasta, olive oil, biscuits and sugar.
SCREENING PROCEDURES
Although the aid was available on Monday, Palestinians appeared to have heeded warnings, including from Hamas, about biometric screening procedures employed at the foundation's aid distribution sites.
"As much as I want to go because I am hungry and my children are hungry, I am afraid," said Abu Ahmed, 55, a father of seven. "I am so scared because they said the company belongs to Israel and is a mercenary, and also because the resistance (Hamas) said not to go," he said in a message on the chat app WhatsApp.
Israel says the Switzerland-based GHF is a US-backed initiative and that its forces will not be involved in the distribution points where food will be handed out.
But its endorsement of the plan, which resembles Israeli schemes floated previously, and its closeness with the US has led many to question the neutrality of the foundation, including its own former chief, who resigned unexpectedly on Sunday.
The Israeli military said four aid sites have been established in recent weeks across the enclave, and that two of them in the area of Rafah began operations on Tuesday and "are distributing food packages to thousands of families in the Gaza Strip."
The GHF said the volume of people seeking aid at one distribution site was so great at one point on Tuesday that its team had to pull back to allow people to "take aid safely and dissipate" and to avoid casualties. It said normal operations had since resumed.
Israeli officials said one of the advantages of the new aid system is the opportunity to screen recipients to exclude anyone found to be connected with Hamas.
Humanitarian groups briefed on the foundation's plans say anyone accessing aid will have to submit to facial recognition technology that many Palestinians fear will end up in Israeli hands to be used to track and potentially target them.
Details of exactly how the system will operate have not been made public.
AID GROUPS BOYCOTT GHF
The United Nations and other international aid groups have boycotted the foundation, which they say undermines the principle that humanitarian aid should be distributed independently of the parties to a conflict, based on need.
"Humanitarian assistance must not be politicized or militarized," said Christian Cardon, chief spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Israel, at war with Gaza's dominant Hamas group since October 2023, imposed the blockade in early March accusing Hamas of stealing supplies and using them to entrench its position. Hamas has denied such accusations.
Hamas, which has in recent months faced protests by many Palestinians who want the devastating war to end, has also warned residents against accessing GHF sites, saying Israel was using the company to collect intelligence information.
The launch of the new system came days after Israel eased its blockade, allowing a trickle of aid trucks from international agencies into Gaza last week, including World Food Program vehicles bringing flour to local bakeries.
But the amount of aid that has entered the densely populated coastal enclave has been just a fraction of the 500-600 trucks that UN agencies estimate are needed every day.
"Before the war, my fridge used to be full of meat, chicken, dairy, soft drinks, everything, and now I am begging for a loaf of bread," Abu Ahmed told Reuters via a chat app.
As a small aid flow has resumed, Israeli forces - now in control of large parts of Gaza - have kept up attacks on various targets around the enclave, killing 3,901 Palestinians since a two-month-old ceasefire collapsed in mid-March, according to the Gaza health ministry.
In all, more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and ground war, Gaza health authorities say. It was launched following a cross-border Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Asharq Al-Awsat
an hour ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel Says Delayed Iran's Presumed Nuclear Program by Two Years
Israel claimed on Saturday it has already set back Iran's presumed nuclear program by at least two years, a day after US President Donald Trump warned that Tehran has a "maximum" of two weeks to avoid possible American air strikes. Trump has been mulling whether to involve the United States in Israel's bombing campaign, indicating in his latest comments that he could take a decision before the two-week deadline he set this week. Israel said Saturday its air force had launched fresh air strikes against missile storage and launch sites in central Iran, as it kept up a wave of attacks it says are aimed at preventing its rival from developing nuclear weapons -- an ambition Tehran has denied. "According to the assessment we hear, we already delayed for at least two or three years the possibility for them to have a nuclear bomb," Israel's foreign minister Gideon Saar said in an interview published Saturday. Saar said Israel's week-long onslaught would continue. "We will do everything that we can do there in order to remove this threat," he told German newspaper Bild. Top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany met their Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Geneva on Friday and urged him to resume talks with the United States that had been derailed by Israel's attacks. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said "we invited the Iranian minister to consider negotiations with all sides, including the United States, without awaiting the cessation of strikes, which we also hope for." But Araghchi told NBC News after the meeting that "we're not prepared to negotiate with them (the United States) anymore, as long as the aggression continues." Trump was dismissive of European diplomacy efforts, telling reporters, "Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this." Trump also said he's unlikely to ask Israel to stop its attacks to get Iran back to the table. "If somebody's winning, it's a little bit harder to do," he said. Any US involvement would likely feature powerful bunker-busting bombs that no other country possesses to destroy an underground uranium enrichment facility in Fordo. On the streets of Tehran, many shops were closed and normally busting markets largely abandoned on Friday. A US-based NGO, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, said on Friday based on its sources and media reports that at least 657 people have been killed in Iran, including 263 civilians. Iran has not updated its tolls since Sunday, when it said that Israeli strikes had killed at least 224 people, including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians. Since Israel launched its offensive on June 13, targeting nuclear and military sites but also hitting residential areas, Iran has responded with barrages which Israeli authorities say have killed at least 25 people. A hospital in the Israeli port of Haifa reported 19 wounded, including one person in a serious condition, after the latest Iranian salvo. Israel's National Public Diplomacy Directorate said more than 450 missiles have been fired at the country so far, along with about 400 drones. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted military sites and air force bases.
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Shipping Company Maersk Temporarily Pauses Haifa Port Calls
Container shipping company Maersk said on Friday it had temporarily paused vessel calls at Israel's Haifa port amid regional tensions. The Danish company said it did not experience any further disruptions to its scheduled operations in the region. Israel has been hitting Iran from the air since last Friday in what it describes as an effort to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran has denied plans to develop such weapons and has retaliated by launching counterstrikes on Israel. On Thursday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said it had launched combined missile and drone attacks at military and industrial sites linked to Israel's defense industry in Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Israel military says hit Hezbollah site in south Lebanon
JERUSALEM: Israel's military said Saturday its navy hit a Hezbollah 'infrastructure site' near the southern Lebanese city of Naqoura, a day after Israel's foreign minister warned the Lebanese armed group against entering the Iran-Israel war. 'Overnight, an Israeli Navy vessel struck a Hezbollah 'Radwan Force' terrorist infrastructure site in the area of Naqoura in southern Lebanon,' the military said in a statement. The military said the site was used by Hezbollah 'to advance terror attacks against Israeli civilians.' In a separate statement on Saturday, the military said it had 'struck and eliminated' a Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon the previous day, despite an ongoing ceasefire between both sides. In a statement carried by the official National News Agency, Lebanon's health ministry said late on Friday that one person was killed in a 'strike carried out by an Israeli enemy drone on a motorcycle' in the same south Lebanon village. The November ceasefire aimed to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which sparked months of deadly hostilities by launching cross-border attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Lebanon's army, which has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure as part of the truce, said earlier in June that the Israeli military's ongoing violations and 'refusal to cooperate' with the ceasefire monitoring mechanism 'could prompt the (Lebanese) military to freeze cooperation' on site inspections.
