Thousands of starving Palestinians swarmed a controversial new aid distribution center in Gaza on Tuesday and made off with boxes of food while Israeli soldiers fired live rounds in the air to disperse the crowds.
It was a violent debut for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) facility near the city of Rafah, the first of four food distribution sites set up by the U.S.-backed organization and the Israeli military to control the flow of humanitarian aid into the crowded Palestinian territory.
The Hamas-run government in Gaza accuses the GHF of being “affiliated with the Israeli occupation administration itself.”
Desperate for food after a three-month blockade of Gaza by the Israelis reduced aid shipments to a trickle, on Tuesday the throng could be seen in live footage storming the barricades and removing boxes of aid while GHF workers looked on.
The GHF released a statement confirming the Gazans took some of the aid from the site they refer to as SDS-1.
“The needs on the ground are great,” the statement said. “At one moment in the late afternoon, the volume of people at the SDS was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties.”
Order was restored by late afternoon, the group said, adding it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to about 462,000 meals, to a crowd of Palestinians that included many women and children, some of whom arrived on donkey carts.
Later, the aid organization and the Israelis accused Hamas of trying to block civilians from reaching the aid distribution center.
The Hamas-run Government Media Office in Gaza blamed the situation on “mismanagement” by the GHF.
“This resulted in thousands of hungry people rushing out under the pressure of the siege and hunger, then storming the distribution centers and seizing food, interspersed with gunfire from the Israeli occupation,” the media office said.
The GHF was set up to take control of food distribution to Gaza away from aid groups led by the United Nations, which have been struggling to keep residents supplied with meals, fuel, medicine and other items since the Israeli war with Hamas erupted in October 2023.
The Israelis have argued that the new system is needed because Hamas has been stealing supplies and starving their own people.
But critics at the U.N. and other relief organizations say Israelis are using aid to lure Palestinians from their homes in northern Gaza to the south so they can solidify their control over the territory.
“The so-called ‘safe distribution sites’ are nothing more than ‘racist isolation ghettos’ established under the supervision of the occupation, in exposed and isolated military areas,” according to the Hama-run media office.
On Monday, the GHF’s chief Jake Wood gave critics of his organization’s efforts more ammunition by suddenly resigning and claiming that it would be impossible to do the job without compromising “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”
COGAT, the Israeli military’s liaison with Palestinians and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, was mum on Wood’s exit.
GHF’s board said in a statement that it was “disappointed” by Wood’s departure but would push forward with its plan and begin distributing aid in Gaza.
