Braving bullets and bodies to reach Israeli-approved aid

New Straits Times

a day ago

WHEN university professor Nizam Salama made his way to a southern Gaza aid point last week, he came under fire twice, was crushed in a desperate crowd of hungry people and finally left empty handed.
The aid site in the city of Rafah was run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new US-based organisation working with private military contractors.
At the aid delivery site, known as SDS 1, queues snaked through narrow cage-like fences before gates were opened to an area surrounded by sand barriers where packages of supplies were left on tables and in boxes on the ground, according to undated CCTV video distributed by GHF, reviewed by Reuters.
Salama said the rush of thousands of people once the gates opened was a "death trap."
Salama's account matched the testimonies of two other aid seekers interviewed by Reuters.
Salama, 52, had heard enough about the new system to know it would be difficult to get aid, he said, but his five children - including two adults, two teenagers and a nine-year-old - needed food.
They have been eating only lentils or pasta for months, he said, often only a single meal a day.
"I was completely against going to the aid site of the American company (GHF) because I knew and I had heard how humiliating it is to do so, but I had no choice because of the bad need to feed my family," said the professor of education administration.
In total, 127 Palestinians have been killed trying to get aid from GHF sites in almost daily shootings since distribution under the new system began two weeks ago.
The system appears to violate core principles of humanitarian aid, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a major humanitarian organisation.
He compared it to the Hunger Games, the dystopian novels that set people to run and fight to the death.
"A few will be rewarded and the many will only risk their lives for nothing," Egeland said.
"International humanitarian law has prescribed that aid in war zones should be provided by neutral intermediaries that can make sure that the most vulnerable will get the relief according to needs alone and not as part of a political or military strategy," he said.
An Israeli defence official involved in humanitarian matters told Reuters GHF's distribution centres were sufficient for around 1.2 million people. Gaza's population is around 2.1 million.
Salama and four neighbours set out from Mawasi, in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip, early Tuesday for the aid site, taking two hours to reach Rafah, several miles away near the Egyptian border.
Shooting started early in their journey. Some fire was coming from the sea, he said, consistent with other accounts of the incidents. Israel's military controls the sea around Gaza.
By the time they reached Alam Roundabout in Rafah, about a kilometre from the site, there was a vast crowd.
There was more shooting and he saw bullets hitting nearby.
"You must duck and stay on the ground," he said, describing casualties with wounds to the head, chest and legs.
He saw bodies nearby, including a woman, along with "many" injured people, he said.
Another aid seeker interviewed by Reuters, who also walked to Rafah on June 3 in the early morning, described repeated gunfire during the journey.
At one point, he and everyone around him crawled for a stretch of several hundred meters, fearing being shot. He saw a body with a wound to the head about 100 meters from the aid site, he said.
When Salama finally arrived at the aid point on June 3, there was nothing left.
Although the aid was gone, ever more people were arriving.
"The flood of people pushes you to the front while I was trying to go back," he said.
As he was pushed further towards where GHF guards were located, he saw them using pepper spray on the crowd, he said.
"I started shouting at the top of my lungs, brothers I don't want anything, I just want to leave, I just want to leave the place," Salama said.
"I left empty-handed... I went back home depressed, sad and angry and hungry too," he said.