At least 27 Palestinians were reported to have been killed on the morning of June 3 amid chaotic scenes at an aid distribution centre in the southern Gaza Strip. This follows a similar incident on June 1 when around 30 civilians were reportedly killed as people scrambled to get food supplies at an aid centre near Rafah in southern Gaza.
The Israeli and US governments and Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – the private contractor backed by Israel and the US to take over aid distribution in Gaza – previously denied reports that Israeli troops had fired on civilians queuing for aid. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, criticised what he called ‘reckless and irresponsible reporting by major US news outlets’.
After the June 3 incident, however, the Israeli military admitted it had fired shots near a food distribution complex after noticing ‘a number of suspects moving towards them’. A GHF spokesperson said it was believed that the people had been fired upon ‘after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone’.
The violence at these privately run aid distribution points should come as no surprise, given the situation. For weeks since the Israeli government imposed its aid blockade in early March, the humanitarian crisis in the Strip has become more acute. By April the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification), a collaboration between numerous intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, was already reporting that Gaza’s whole population was experiencing critical levels of hunger.
The aid distribution system put in place by GHF, meanwhile, has been widely criticised. On May 25, the day before GHF began operations in Gaza its American director, Jake Wood, resigned. He said he believed the organisation would not be able to fulfil the basic humanitarian principles of ‘humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence’.
Divide and control
The GHF’s aid distribution plan is similar in character to a plan published in December 2024 by an organisation of many former high-ranking Israeli military officers, Israel’s Defense and Security Forum (IDSF). The group proposed to take control of aid distribution from the UN agency Unrwa, which was the main organisation overseeing aid distribution until it was banned by Israel earlier this year.
The IDSF plan proposes that: “Israel will oversee the aid distributed by international organizations, effectively dismantling the distribution networks of UNRWA and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, guided by the principle: ‘The hand that distributes the aid is the hand that controls it’.”
This would be achieved with the creation of tent cities for internally displaced people (IDP), described as ‘humanitarian zones’. About 90% of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza are IDPs. The IDSF plan, acknowledging that ‘extensive built-up areas have been left destroyed, or are no longer inhabitable’, says that ‘it is currently neither feasible nor recommended that the IDPs return at the conclusion of the war’.
Under the plan, parts of the Gaza Strip still inhabited by Palestinian civilians, will be divided by a ‘system of longitudinal and transverse axes’. Each ‘IDP city’ created within these divisions will be managed as a ‘separate temporary administrative territory’ following the principle of ‘divide and rule’.
The plan calls for responsibility for humanitarian aid in Gaza to pass ‘to a Humanitarian Directorate based on IDP cities and biometric certificates’. This is called the ‘Day After Plan’ by the IDSF, designed as a way to control Gaza’s population, while driving a wedge between civilians and Hamas in order to destroy it. This despite the fact that a senior Israeli military commander has said it is impossible to eliminate Hamas.
Reality on the ground
The way GHF is currently organising aid distribution fulfils some of the principles of the IDSF plan. It replaces UN aid distribution with a private outfit, backed by both Israel and the US, yet it provides aid through only four sites.
These are located unevenly in the Gaza Strip, three in a small area southwest of Rafah, and the fourth south of Gaza City, in an area dominated by the Netzarim corridor, which is controlled by the Israeli military.
(Via the Conversation)
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