Why the Israel-backed aid plan sparked chaos

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

Sam Hawley: This week, the Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg turned her activism to aid when she tried to sail to Gaza. She was arrested, detained and has now been deported by the Israelis. Since Israel began allowing a limited amount of food back into Gaza, the handout has been marked by disturbing scenes, including civilians being shot dead near aid distribution sites. Today, we speak to Australian UNICEF spokesman James Elder, who's in Gaza, about why the chaos was inevitable. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Sam Hawley: James, just explain exactly where you are and what you're doing right at the moment.
James Elder: Yeah, I'm in the southwest, a heavy night of bombardment, another heavy night. When I say bombardment, I mean 2000 pound bombs. I mean buildings shaking and I'm looking out to people in tents. A lot of artillery, machine gun fire. It's night after night, Sam.It's, I mean, that's the nights and the days, the recovery. And you have mass casualty events. I go to hospitals and of course, just focusing a lot for my own work on the on the malnutrition side of things. But that's a sort of standard day, I guess.
Sam Hawley: How do you keep yourself safe? That sounds terrifying.
James Elder: Look, Sam, it's not an exaggeration. We've said this since October 2023. No place is safe in Gaza. It's really clear. We've seen from our Australian colleague at World Central Kitchen or UN colleagues a couple of months ago, aid workers get killed here all the time. It's more aid workers have been killed here than in any other war since World War II. Absolutely nothing safe. I can't begin to explain, Sam, the level of children I've seen, the wounds to children.When the killing of children ceases to shock, as it seems to do with those with influence now, then we're no longer just witnessing this tragedy. We're complicit in it.
Sam Hawley: Israel, of course, does say that there is some disinformation that is put out there about what is going on on the ground in Gaza. There are no international journalists there, of course, because the Israelis won't let international journalists in. But what you are seeing is absolutely atrocious.
James Elder: I'm seeing the carnage of children, Sam, and this is my fifth time back. And it's very clear why are international journalists banned from here? They're banned so as not to bear witness. I've never, ever been to a conflict zone before. And I've done this for 22 years in 30, 50, 30, 40 countries where every time I go into a hospital, and I mean yesterday and the day before, I walk in. Let's take two days ago. I walked in and I saw a little boy, Abdul Rahman, who was 13. His father gave him some money to go and buy bread. He went down there. It's chaos. They're throwing boxes. There was gunfire. A tank shell was fired. Shrapnel has ripped through his body. I turn around and there's a girl who's just had another leg amputated, making it two legs amputated. I've seen more than 100 of these cases. So we're way past the credibility for false statements. We've never seen this level of attack on children. When UNICEF calls it a war on children, we don't do that for a headline. We do that because in modern history, we have never seen this level of boys and girls killed in this space of time. And it's ongoing.
Sam Hawley: James, let's discuss the distribution of aid and how that is currently happening. We know there was a three-month blockade, of course, of aid, which began in March, with Israel accusing Hamas of stealing that aid. But some aid has now been brought back in, of course.
News report: Benjamin Netanyahu saying that a basic amount of food will be allowed in because a starvation crisis would jeopardise Israel's new military offensive.
News report: Israel wants a new aid organisation with unknown funding and experience to replace the extensive distribution system in Gaza that was managed by the United Nations. That group has opened delivery sites to distribute basic food parcels.
News report: In the last few hours, reports have emerged of more Palestinians being shot dead, desperately trying to access aid.
News report: A third major shooting attack near a southern Gaza aid distribution point in as many days is fuelling deep despair amongst the Palestinian community.
News report: The UN is calling for an immediate, independent investigation into the killings. It's also saying that the current aid system is grossly inadequate and has allowed aid delivery inside Gaza to become militarised.
Sam Hawley: So, James, tell me how the aid system is working now, because all of that changed when the three-month blockade was lifted, didn't it?
James Elder: Yes, exactly. So, three months. That's important to remember. That's three months of... I mean, I'm from Goulburn, right? So, that's three months where you don't allow anything in. You don't allow a drop of food. You don't allow medicine. You don't allow a single thing to enter. This is two million people, so it's a bad example. But you allow nothing into that town or city except bombs. And that's now why we have nearly half a million people teetering on the edge of starvation. What's now happened is we have a handful of militarised sites in the south. Before this opened, the United Nations, who has done this in 100 different conflict and natural disaster settings since World War II, warned that it simply won't work and you'll have people killed. Now, unfortunately, what this is, is, yeah, it's a handful of sites in the south. Children have been killed trying to get aid from these sites. Aid, of course, is more than food. What's in this box is food. Aid is painkillers, it's antibiotics, it's obstetric kits to deliver babies, it's incubators, it's ventilators, it's hygiene pads, sanitary pads, it's wheelchairs, it's blankets, it's tents, it's fuel to keep hospitals running. It's oral rehydration salts. It's all these things. So, aid is being reduced to a box, a box in three or four distribution sites. So, if you're elderly, if you're a single mum with kids, or if you're an amputee and there's thousands of those, you have no chance, none whatsoever. This is survival of the fittest.
Sam Hawley: Yeah. So, just so I understand this, before now, for the most part, UN agencies and other aid groups have overseen the distribution of aid and there could have been up to 400 different distribution points. But now, there is one body, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that has been set up and that is the organisation that is distributing aid.
James Elder: That's exactly right. So, during the ceasefire, when aid flowed, the United Nations had 400 distribution points across Gaza. That's critical. Humanitarian aid is about being principled and going to where people need it. Now that that has been removed, trying to be replaced by an aid system, if you will, that only gives food, there are three or four distribution sites. And there is a reason, Sam, we have to look at. It's been made clear, under the pretense of aid, this is to force people to move south. It's to try and ease international pressure. We've seen this every time there's a blockade. There's international pressure because the world's most reputable body on nutrition says we're near a famine. International pressure means they just loosen a little bit and then the international pressure and the international interest fades and it tightens again. This is to ease international pressure around starvation. But what it does is circumvents an effective system. An effective system, as I say, that has worked since World War Two and it worked very well two months ago.
Sam Hawley: So, who, just explain for me, this new body, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, who runs it? Who funds it?
James Elder: There is no clarity on who funds it. Transparency is another very key part of humanitarian aid. There's no clarity at all about who funds it. Who runs it? It's men with guns. It's militarised. It's the exact opposite of what humanitarian aid must be. So, it's 30, 20, 30 miles to walk to. So, if you're a mum with kids, if you're elderly, if you're injured, if you're sick, forget it. These militarised sites, I spoke of the little boy who now is in hospital with horrendous, horrendous wounds from the tank shell, the same hospital I met a 24-year-old, Shima, she too had tried to go to a site. She too, her family was starving. Same story, different day. She makes the long trek, gunfire, boxes of food thrown to the ground, complete removal of any dignity. In her words, quote, unquote, I saw bodies on the ground, people stepping over them, just trying to get food. She became entangled in wire. So, when we met her, that's why she was at the hospital, her leg and her arm were torn open. She tried to flee. She didn't get any food. And the system that has worked from Sudan to Yemen to Afghanistan to Ukraine is being sidelined.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, James, you're working in a war zone, of course. We can hear the birds in the background, which is incredible.
James Elder: That's very interesting you say that, because I can hear tank fire. Tank fire. That's extraordinary. It's the strangest thing, Sam. We have birds literally consistently bashing on the windows, as if they're just done, as if they're just, you know, seeking, I guess, to try and get inside. It's very, very strange.
Sam Hawley: Well, Israel, of course, does deny that it's deliberately targeting civilians at aid sites. But in some cases, the IDF has fired warning shots at people who have approached the forces. And Israel blames Hamas for some of those deaths. That is what Israel is saying.
James Elder: Yeah, and it's perilous territory for me to take on statements from a government. But it's a combat site. Humanitarian aid can't be delivered around one party to the conflict. This is why this distribution site doesn't work. It's why it's never existed anywhere else. It's why you have brave partners on the ground in the United Nations. The accountability is very clearly, it's with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and it is with the IDF under any sense of international humanitarian law.
Sam Hawley: Well, Israeli's Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel has defended this new system, and she's actually attacked the UN.
Sharren Haskel, Israeli deputy foreign minister: The UN is doing everything possible to fight against the GHF and the effort to deliver aid to the people of Gaza. The UN and Hamas both insist on the old model of aid distribution. And one should ask, does the UN really care about providing aid to the people in Gaza? Or is it more focused on feeding Hamas and its war machine?
Sam Hawley: And what about that claim then from Israel that Hamas has been stealing the aid?
James Elder: The evidence on aid diversion is a simple line, Sam. Just show us the proof. At no point, at no point in these 20 months have we had any precise claims from authorities, let alone evidence presented. So we face statements without evidence designed to discredit tried and tested aid systems and justify controlling and weaponising aid and displacing a population. Take UNICEF, okay? So even without the evidence, just take UNICEF, because it's not the first time we've worked in a war zone with a lack of governance. Our aid is tracked from point of registration to point of delivery. That is, you know, vaccine from getting in a truck to in a child's arm, nutritionist food from getting in a truck to in a child's mouth. We've got so many accountability systems that are built up over decades of practice in scores of conflict zones, right? From targeted distribution to children and families, door to door to malnutrition to third party monitoring. Okay, so going beyond the absence of evidence, just let's look at logic. What value to Hamas are incubators for premature babies who are dying right now because we have incubators on the wrong side of the border? Vaccines, kits for midwives?
Sam Hawley: Well, James, of course, the world is increasingly concerned by what is happening in Gaza and the images that we are seeing out of there. We've seen the likes, of course, of Greta Thunberg try to sail to Gaza. But what actually needs to happen right now in your view?
James Elder: It's as simple as it's always been. It's a ceasefire because a ceasefire ends the abhorrence of hostages here. Get those hostages home. Let's be very clear as well. When there's been ceasefires and negotiations, more than 150 hostages went home to their families. A ceasefire lets us flood the Gaza Strip with aid. It's allowing what international law says and allowing what happens in every other complex conflict zone without governance around the world. Let the United Nations, their doctors, their nurses, their logisticians, their engineers, not men with guns, not this chaos at these sites, let them do their job. But our message is very, very clear that you cannot continue to restrict and the world just cannot normalise that these restrictions on humanitarian aid are decent, are reasonable. I think the thing that really struck me, having been in many, many conflict zones, UNICEF's work is quite simple in some ways. It's you advocate that children should have access to nutrition, children should be safe and children should be in a classroom. It's pretty simple messaging. This is the first time in my career when I'm not advocating that children need all these things. I have to start by advocating that children in Gaza are in fact children. I find that so very, very troubling and that's only got harder and harder in the last 20 months.
Sam Hawley: James Elder is the global spokesman for UNICEF. He's currently based in Gaza. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.