British ex army officer films huge crowds of Palestinians scrambling for food in Gaza after aid truck deliveries amid war of words over who is to blame for 'starvation' crisis

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

A former British soldier in Gaza has shared chaotic and unsettling scenes of civilians rushing to collect aid from a distribution site as essentials continued to trickle into the beleaguered Palestinian enclave.
Andrew Fox, a former British Army airborne officer, shared a series of clips from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) site in Rafah, describing an 'influx of hungry Gazans coming to get their aid'.
The video was shared on social media in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after Israel said on Sunday it would halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of the Gaza Strip and allow new aid corridors.
Rival aid efforts have sparked a war of words, pitting Israel, the U.S. and the GHF against the U.N., international aid groups and dozens of governments from around the world. Some have accused Israel of deliberately starving Gaza's civilian population.
Israel and the U.S. accuse Hamas of stealing aid - which they deny - and the U.N. of failing to prevent it. The U.N. says it has not seen evidence of mass aid diversion in Gaza by Hamas. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and no starvation per se.
Donald Trump diverged from Mr Netanyahu's comments on Monday, insisting there is 'real starvation' in Gaza. Asked if he agreed with Mr Netanyahu that it was a 'bold-faced lie' to say Israel was fuelling hunger, he said: 'I don't know...those children look very hungry...that's real starvation stuff.'
On Monday night, Mr Netanyahu's office said that Israel would work with aid groups, the U.S. and Europe to ensure 'large amounts of humanitarian aid flows' into Gaza.
Israel said that 120 aid trucks had entered Gaza from crossings on Sunday, and that Jordan and the UAE had airdropped 28 packages of food. The GHF said it had delivered more than 95 million meals directly to Palestinians in Gaza in total.
But on Monday, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said a further 14 people had died from malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 147 since the start of the war, according to the ministry.
Israel has said that Hamas is using a so-called 'famine narrative' for leverage in ceasefire talks, which broke down last week as the U.S. and Israel left talks in Doha, suggesting a cynical 'lack of desire to reach a ceasefire' from Hamas.
Hamas responded with incredulity and insisted it did want to continue negotiations. Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya then said on Monday there was 'no point in continuing negotiations' under current conditions.
A source close to Hamas told CNN: 'After the Israeli side withdrew from the negotiations, Hamas is considering reversing the flexibility it had shown regarding the timeline for releasing the 10 living Israelis captives.'
Until talks resume, Gaza's 2.1 million population remains in dire need of aid.
Mr Fox's dispatch from Rafah offers a rare insight into the coordination of aid deliveries in the Gaza Strip. Journalists are pushing to be allowed in and out of the enclave and say reporting from the enclave is nearing 'extinction' with local reporters facing 'threat of starvation'.
'The flow of people just keeps coming,' Mr Fox said, reporting from the sidelines of the crowd in the first few minutes of opening. The initial influx was mostly young men, he said, who were ordered to dismount from motorbikes to avoid injuries.
Within 20 minutes, he said, they were starting to see more women and children arrive to claim essentials held in reserve.
After 45 minutes, the aid had mostly been depleted. Mr Fox said the team had used smoke and flashbang grenades to 'encourage the last of the male crowd out of the site' to allow the team to hand out aid held in reserve for women and children.
Mr Fox described GHF cardboard boxes, which he said were enough to buy one kilogram (2.2lbs) of flour in the barter economy. Increasingly, he said, Palestinians were taking empty boxes and wooden pallets to be used as firewood, with Gaza facing blackouts.
'No live rounds at all have been fired,' he said. Women and young people could be seen leaving the site with aid, waving and gesturing towards the camera.
The GHF, a U.S.-backed private aid operation supported by Israel, has faced pressure in recent days after the UN reported that Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food aid, mostly near distribution points.
Israel accused Hamas of instigating chaos near the aid sites. It said its troops had only fired warning shots, and that they do not deliberately shoot civilians. The GHF has accused Hamas of massive aid theft in defending its distribution model.
An internal U.S. government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies by Hamas, challenging the rationale Israel and the U.S. give for backing the aid operation, as reported by Reuters last week.
Mr Fox described the challenging environment facing locals as they waited to start distributing aid in Rafah.
'The terrain here is as destroyed as has been reported in the media. It's no lie. The place is wrecked. These people do need food. They do need feeding. They need the aid that these teams are bringing to them.
'This is really, really hot. There is water on site but people are still struggling for the very basics of life, and GHF are here to try and at least alleviate some of that suffering.'
He wrote in a July 24 blog that while aid was entering Gaza, 'the grim truth is that supply is not the same as access'.
'Gaza's crisis is mainly a result of distribution collapse and governance issues, worsened by Hamas's tactics and the paralysis of traditional aid channels.'
In testimonies shared with MailOnline, International Rescue Committee (IRC) staff inside Gaza described harrowing scenes.
'People are collapsing in the streets from emaciation... I saw a child digging through a pile of trash for food. He found nothing,' said IRC staffer Abdelraheem Hamad.
'The sound of children crying from hunger never stops. Every day, people knock on our doors asking for food. Not money — just bread,' said staffer Rania Al Shrehi.
The leading international authority on food crises said in a new alert Tuesday that the 'worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip', predicting 'widespread death' without immediate action.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine for two years, but recent developments have 'dramatically worsened' the situation, including 'increasingly stringent blockades' by Israel.
The IPC is a global initiative that partners with 21 aid groups, international organizations, and U.N. agencies, and assesses the extent of hunger suffered by a population.
The alert, still short of a formal famine declaration, follows an outcry over images of emaciated children in Gaza and reports of dozens of hunger-related deaths after nearly 22 months of war.
While international pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures to deliver more aid, the United Nations and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm and unload delivery trucks before they can reach their destinations.
'Formal famine declarations always lag reality,' David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee aid group, said in a statement ahead of the IPC alert.
'By the time that famine was declared in Somalia in 2011, 250,000 people - half of them children under 5 - had already died of hunger. By the time famine is declared, it will already be too late,' he said.
'In the coming days, thousands of Gaza's children will either be rescued — or allowed to die. That is the choice before us.'
The conflict between Israel and Gaza continued as aid agencies scrambled to deliver essentials.
Gaza's civil defence said Tuesday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians, including women and children, in the central Nuseirat district.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said the strikes were carried out overnight and into the morning and 'targeted a number of citizens' homes' in the Nuseirat refugee camp.