MSF, UN slam US-backed Gaza 'death sentence' aid scheme

By AFP/Nina LARSON

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday branded a controversial Israel- and US-backed food distribution effort in Gaza as "slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid", calling for it to be ended.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began operating last month and has largely replaced established humanitarian organisations, "is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies", MSF said in a statement.

Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of famine across a territory widely flattened by Israeli bombing since the massive October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.

Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, using GHF -- backed by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter -- to run operations.

The UN and major aid groups have refused to work with it, saying it serves Israeli military goals and violates basic humanitarian principles.

Washington meanwhile announced this week that it would provide $30 million in direct funding to the GHF, even as it has slashed practically all of its traditional foreign aid support.

Over 500 killed

The organisation has been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Friday that in the past two weeks 500 people have been killed "at non-UN militarised food-distribution sites".

MSF said that "with over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled".

GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.

And Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday rejected an Israeli media report that military commanders have ordered soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza.

But MSF insisted its teams in Gaza were seeing patients daily "who have been killed or wounded trying to get food" at one of GHF's four distribution sites, pointing to "a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds".

Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF's emergency coordinator in Gaza, said the four sites were all under the full control of Israeli forces, surrounded by watch points and barbed wire.

"If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot," he said in the statement.

"If they arrive late, they shouldn't be there because it is an 'evacuated zone' -- they get shot."

'Death sentence'

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that hungry people in Gaza seeking food must not face a "death sentence".

"People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence," Guterres told reporters, without explicitly naming the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

"Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people," he added.

"The problem of the distribution of humanitarian aid must be solved. There is no need to reinvent the wheel with dangerous schemes," Guterres said.

"We have the solution -- a detailed plan grounded in the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. We have the supplies. We have the experience. Our plan is guided by what people need," said the UN chief.

"A trickle of aid is not enough. What’s needed now is a surge — the trickle must become an ocean," said Guterres.

'Hunger stalks everyone'

MSF also warned that the way GHF distributes food aid supplies "forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies".

"These sites hinder women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities from accessing aid, and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process," it said.

MSF urged "the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical and humanitarian supplies and to revert to the pre-existing principled humanitarian system coordinated by the UN".

The United Nations this week condemned what it said appeared to be Israel's "weaponization of food" in Gaza -- a war crime.