Latest news with #GazaAid
CBC
13 hours ago
- General
- CBC
New Gaza aid group met with chaos, gunfire in its first week
In the southern tip of Gaza, along a dusty road that is mostly desolate — but for an Israeli military presence — thousands of Palestinians gathered on Friday for the latest aid distribution from the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The lines were long, the road was dangerous and the possibility of leaving empty handed was high. But people were, and remain, desperate. And after weeks of aid not getting into Gaza, they'll go to any lengths to secure some food. "I'm coming to face death so I can feed my children," Imran Wafi told CBC News, from the side of a road leading to a distribution point. "We know it's dangerous but the big catastrophe is there's no food for us to eat." GHF claims it has delivered over two million meals in Gaza in its first week of operations in the enclave. The U.S.-backed startup was established in February in Switzerland, and has already drawn widespread condemnation from other aid agencies operating in the territory. In a statement to CBC News, GHF said its distributions occurred "without incident" and that it plans to expand its presence in the enclave "including in the northern region" in the weeks to come. It currently runs two sites, one in Rafah and one in central Gaza in the Natsarim corridor. WATCH | GHF delivers aid in Gaza: Controversial U.S. company distributes aid in Gaza amid sounds of gunshots 3 days ago Duration 1:17 But eyewitness reports from the ground say many of those distributions have been chaotic, and that at least one person was killed at a GHF hub — a claim which the organization denies. Video footage from throughout the week shows droves of people breaking through fences and running in every direction amid gunshots. Gaza resident Ahmed Al-Qadi says his friend, Mohamed Abdelhadi, was killed getting aid from GHF at Natsarim on Wednesday. "He went to get aid and on his way home... he turned his back and he got hit," he said. "This aid is with blood, it's dipped in blood." GHF denies anyone was killed during its operations this week. "No civilians or individuals involved with the distribution of aid were injured, no lives were lost," it said in a statement to CBC News. And yet, aid distributions by the group, which started on Monday, have not been without hiccups, many ending with warning shots or chaotic breaks by Palestinians through fences set up to control the lineups. GHF has also faced criticism from organizations including the United Nations, which opposes its operations in Gaza. The previous leading aid group in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), was banned from the territory last year by Israel over its staffers' alleged involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas which sparked the current war in Gaza. Despite that, UNRWA continued operating and the ban was met with concern from international leaders. The UN said Friday that GHF is an "attempt to circumvent the UN and its agencies on the ground" which have been present in Gaza for a long time "in accordance with international law." The statement went on to say that GHF "fails the test of humanitarian principles." CBC News caught up with people walking back from the distribution point in central Gaza. One man showed the contents of a box containing flour, sugar, pasta and oil. But not everyone was as lucky. Gaza resident Muhammad Abu Gharqud said Thursday was the second time he came to a distribution point and left empty handed. Leaning on a crutch because of his amputated leg, the 45-year-old looked exhausted. "I can't find food for my kids," he said. "I can't find anything." Desperation mounted for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as looting became more frequent this week. Some aid trucks were allowed in but were met with mobs of civilians looking for any food they can get their hands on and particularly flour. Muhammad Shamlakh was at the scene when a truck was looted in Gaza City on Thursday. He said people were "eating each other alive." "The people are dying of hunger," he said. "There's no flour, everything was stolen." WATCH | Palestinians loot aid truck: Aid trucks are looted in central Gaza Strip 3 days ago Duration 0:50 As aid trucks made their way to central Gaza, hundreds of civilians looted them in an effort to secure food after weeks of hunger as aid slowly trickles into the territory.
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump vowed to remake aid. Is Gaza the future?
President Donald Trump has slashed US aid and vowed a major rethink on helping the world. A controversial effort to bring food to Gaza may offer clues on what's to come. Administered by contracted US security with Israeli troops at the perimeter, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is distributing food through several hubs in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. An officially private effort with opaque funding, the GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for over two months, sparking warnings of mass famine. The organization said it had distributed 2.1 million meals as of Friday. The initiative excludes the United Nations, which has long coordinated aid distribution in the war-ravaged territory and has infrastructure and systems in place to deliver assistance on a large scale. The UN and other major aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF, saying it violates basic humanitarian principles, and appears crafted to cater to Israeli military objectives. "What we have seen is chaotic, it's tragic and it's resulted in hundreds of thousands of people scrambling in an incredibly undignified and unsafe way to access a tiny trickle of aid," said Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president of international programs at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his aid group stopped work in Gaza in 2015 when Hamas militants invaded its office and that it refused to cooperate in Syria when former strongman Bashar al-Assad was pressuring opposition-held areas by withholding food. "Why on earth would we be willing to let the Israeli military decide how, where and to whom we give our aid as part of their military strategy to herd people around Gaza?" said Egeland. "It's a violation of everything we stand for. It is the biggest and reddest line there is that we cannot cross." - Sidelining UN - The UN said that 47 people were injured Tuesday when hungry and desperate crowds rushed a GHF site -- most of them by Israeli gunfire -- while a Palestinian medical source said at least one person had died. The Israeli military denied its soldiers fired on civilians and the GHF denied any injuries or deaths. Israel has relentlessly attacked Gaza since Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel has vowed to sideline the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, accusing it of bias and of harboring Hamas militants. UNRWA said that nine out of thousands of staff may have been involved in the October 7 attack and dismissed them, but accuses Israel of trying to throw a distraction. John Hannah, a former senior US policymaker who led a study last year that gave birth to the concepts behind the GHF, said the UN seemed to be "completely lacking in self-reflection" on the need for a new approach to aid after Hamas built a "terror kingdom." "I fear that people could be on the brink of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good instead of figuring out how do we take part in this effort, improve it, make it better, scale it up," said Hannah, who is not involved in implementing the GHF. Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, defended the use of private contractors, saying that many had extensive Middle East experience from the US-led "war on terror." "We would have been happy if there were volunteers from (other) capable and trusted national forces... but the fact is, nobody's volunteering," he said. He said he would rather that aid workers coordinate with Israel than Hamas. "Inevitably, any humanitarian effort in a war zone has to make some compromises with a ruling authority that carries the guns," he said. - Legitimacy issue - Hannah's study had discouraged a major Israeli role in humanitarian work in Gaza, urging instead involvement by Arab states to bring greater legitimacy. Arab states have balked at supporting US efforts as Israel pounds Gaza and after Trump mused about forcibly displacing the whole Gaza population and constructing luxury hotels. Israel and Hamas are negotiating a new Gaza ceasefire that could see a resumption of UN-backed efforts. Aid groups say they have vast amounts of aid ready for Gaza that remain blocked. Donnelly said the IRC had 27 tons of supplies waiting to enter Gaza, faulting the GHF for distributing items like pasta and tinned fish that require cooking supplies -- not therapeutic food and treatment for malnourished children. He called for distributing relief in communities where people need it, instead of through militarized hubs. "If anyone really cares about distributing aid in a transparent, accountable, effective way, the way to do that is to use the expertise and infrastructure of aid organizations that have been doing this for decades," Donnelly said. sct/nl
Arab News
19 hours ago
- Business
- Arab News
Trump vowed to remake aid. Is Gaza the future?
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has slashed US aid and vowed a major rethink on helping the world. A controversial effort to bring food to Gaza may offer clues on what's to come. Administered by contracted US security with Israeli troops at the perimeter, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is distributing food through several hubs in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. An officially private effort with opaque funding, the GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for over two months, sparking warnings of mass famine. The organization said it had distributed 2.1 million meals as of Friday. The initiative excludes the UN, which has long coordinated aid distribution in the war-ravaged territory and has infrastructure and systems in place to deliver assistance on a large scale. The UN and other major aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF, saying it violates basic humanitarian principles, and appears crafted to cater to Israeli military objectives. 'What we have seen is chaotic, it's tragic and it's resulted in hundreds of thousands of people scrambling in an incredibly undignified and unsafe way to access a tiny trickle of aid,' said Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president of international programs at the International Rescue Committee . Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his aid group stopped work in Gaza in 2015 when Hamas militants invaded its office and that it refused to cooperate in Syria when former strongman Bashar Assad was pressuring opposition-held areas by withholding food. 'Why on earth would we be willing to let the Israeli military decide how, where and to whom we give our aid as part of their military strategy to herd people around Gaza?' said Egeland. 'It's a violation of everything we stand for. It is the biggest and reddest line there is that we cannot cross.' The UN said that 47 people were injured Tuesday when hungry and desperate crowds rushed a GHF site — most of them by Israeli gunfire — while a Palestinian medical source said at least one person had died. The Israeli military denied its soldiers fired on civilians and the GHF denied any injuries or deaths. Israel has relentlessly attacked Gaza since Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel has vowed to sideline the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, accusing it of bias and of harboring Hamas militants. UNRWA said that nine out of thousands of staff may have been involved in the October 7 attack and dismissed them, but accuses Israel of trying to throw a distraction. John Hannah, a former senior US policymaker who led a study last year that gave birth to the concepts behind the GHF, said the UN seemed to be 'completely lacking in self-reflection' on the need for a new approach to aid after Hamas built a 'terror kingdom.' 'I fear that people could be on the brink of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good instead of figuring out how do we take part in this effort, improve it, make it better, scale it up,' said Hannah, who is not involved in implementing the GHF. Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, defended the use of private contractors, saying that many had extensive Middle East experience from the US-led 'war on terror.' 'We would have been happy if there were volunteers from capable and trusted national forces... but the fact is, nobody's volunteering,' he said. He said he would rather that aid workers coordinate with Israel than Hamas. 'Inevitably, any humanitarian effort in a war zone has to make some compromises with a ruling authority that carries the guns,' he said. Hannah's study had discouraged a major Israeli role in humanitarian work in Gaza, urging instead involvement by Arab states to bring greater legitimacy. Arab states have balked at supporting US efforts as Israel pounds Gaza and after Trump mused about forcibly displacing the whole Gaza population and constructing luxury hotels. Israel and Hamas are negotiating a new Gaza ceasefire that could see a resumption of UN-backed efforts. Aid groups say they have vast amounts of aid ready for Gaza that remain blocked. Donnelly said the IRC had 27 tons of supplies waiting to enter Gaza, faulting the GHF for distributing items like pasta and tinned fish that require cooking supplies — not therapeutic food and treatment for malnourished children. He called for distributing relief in communities where people need it, instead of through militarized hubs. 'If anyone really cares about distributing aid in a transparent, accountable, effective way, the way to do that is to use the expertise and infrastructure of aid organizations that have been doing this for decades,' Donnelly said.
CNN
a day ago
- General
- CNN
Controversial new Gaza aid group isn't screening recipients — despite being established to keep supplies from Hamas
The embattled Israeli-backed aid group that began operating in Gaza earlier this week is not screening Palestinians at aid distribution sites, despite Israeli officials saying that additional security measures were a core reason for the creation of the new program. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is operating in the strip with US and Israeli approval, was established amid Israeli accusations that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza and profiting off its sale. Humanitarian organizations have said there is no evidence tying significant diversion of aid to Hamas, and Israel has presented none publicly. But it is those claims that have prompted Israel to seek to replace traditional humanitarian organizations with GHF, which they said would prevent Hamas from obtaining the aid. Yet GHF appears to have fewer safeguards in place to ensure aid reaches those in need than United Nations aid organizations, like UNRWA, which typically does check identification and relies on a database of registered families when distributing aid. A journalist working with CNN who entered one distribution site and multiple Palestinians who collected aid at several sites said they faced no security or identification screenings before entering. Several eyewitnesses said criminal gangs and merchants were taking advantage of the situation, paying people to make trips into the distribution sites to collect aid boxes they could then resell. CNN video filmed outside the aid site shows several groups of young men hauling away aid boxes on donkey carts, while hiding their faces with their shirts and asking not to be filmed. 'There is not enough aid distributed in Gaza yet … so our focus is on feeding hungry people, not checking IDs,' a GHF spokesperson told CNN. 'We have no knowledge nor have witnessed any criminal behavior.' When asked if GHF would check identification in the future, the spokesperson called the situation 'fluid' and said GHF would continuously 'reassess the situation.' GHF's operations do include more militarized security around their distribution sites and truck convoys entering Gaza. Armed American security contractors have secured GHF aid trucks entering Gaza, reducing the risk of those trucks being seized or looted while en route. The lack of screenings raises questions about how GHF will be more effective at preventing the diversion of aid than the UN agencies which have supplied the overwhelming majority of aid to Gaza during the war and which have refused to participate in the new GHF-run mechanism due to concerns about a lack of independence and heightened risks for Palestinians. GHF said in a recent statement that it would establish a 'secure, transparent system to deliver aid directly and effectively – without diversion or delay.' But Palestinians at the site said diversion of aid is already underway. 'The Americans opened the doors for us and whoever wants can get in and take what they need,' Bilal Hawadri said, referring to American security contractors. 'Some stood in the line, but then people started stealing.' Another man, Yousef Shallouf, said he saw 'gangsters' pay individuals to 'go get aid boxes,' which they would then resell. Such actions would be more difficult under the UN-administered systems. During much of the war, UNRWA – the primary provider of aid in Gaza – has distributed aid based on its database of families in Gaza. Recipients are asked to bring identification and once a family representative has collected aid, they are ticked off a list, according to an UNRWA spokesperson. Israeli officials have recently forced the UN to alter that system, requiring recent distributions to take place at bakeries and kitchens where mass distribution, rather than a per-household system, takes place. The UN's aid agencies have refused to participate in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's aid mechanism, saying it violates humanitarian principles and raises the risks for Palestinians. UN officials have only ramped up their criticism this week, amid chaotic scenes near the distribution points and killings near the sites. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has said that 11 Palestinians were killed this week near the GHF distribution points, amid Israeli gunfire directed at crowds of people near the sites. Earlier in the week, thousands of hungry Palestinians overran one of the distribution points, prompting American security contractors to withdraw from the site. GHF says it has distributed more than 23,000 boxes of food aid this week, totaling more than 2 million meals. 'Despite the emergency intensity and kinetic environment surrounding our operations, the fact is our assistance efforts are helping Gazans,' GHF's interim executive director John Acree said in a statement Friday. 'But this is just the beginning. Our commitment to safely and effectively supplying food directly to a large, hungry population is unwavering, and we look forward to continuing to scale and strengthen on our initial undertakings to help meet the basic food security needs of the people in Gaza.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 days ago
- General
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Gaza Aid System Under Pressure as Thousands Seek Food
After a slow and chaotic start to the new US-backed aid system in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians have been arriving at distribution points, seeking desperately needed food despite scenes of disorder and fears of violence. The two hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private group sponsored by the United States and endorsed by Israel, have been running since Tuesday, but the launch was marred by tumultuous scenes when thousands rushed the fences and forced private contractors providing security to retreat. An Israeli military official told Reuters that the GHF was now operating four aid distribution sites, three in the Rafah area in the south and one in the Netzarim area in central Gaza. The new system has been heavily criticized by the United Nations and other aid groups as an inadequate and flawed response to the humanitarian crisis left by Israel's 11-week blockade on aid entering Gaza. Wessam Khader, a 25-year-old father of a three-year-old boy, said he had gone to a site near Rafah, despite widespread suspicions of the new system among Palestinians and warnings from militant group Hamas to stay away. He said he had gone every day since Tuesday but only obtained a 3 kg (6.6 pounds) package containing flour, canned sardines, salt, noodles, biscuits and jam on the first day. "I was driven by the hunger, for several weeks we had no flour, we had nothing in the tent," he told Reuters by telephone from Rafah. "My son wakes every day asking for something to eat and I can't give him." When he arrived with his father and brother, there were thousands there already and no sign of the identification process that Israeli officials had said would be in place to screen out anyone considered to have links to Hamas. "I didn't see anything, no one asked for me for anything, and if there was an electronic gate or screening I think it collapsed under the feet of the crowds," he said. The gates, the wire fences were all brought down and even plastic pipes, metal boards and fencing material was carried off. "People were hungry and they took everything at the site," he said. Earlier this week, GHP said it had anticipated such reactions from a "distressed population". For Palestinians in northern Gaza, cut off from the distribution points in the south even that remains out of reach. "We see videos about the aid, and people getting some, but they keep saying no trucks can enter north where we live," said Ghada Zaki, a 52-year-old mother of seven in Gaza City, told Reuters via chat app. AIR STRIKES Israel imposed the blockade at the beginning of March, saying supplies were being stolen by Hamas and used to entrench its control over Gaza. Hamas denies stealing aid and says it has protected aid trucks from looters. Even as thousands made their way to the distribution site, Israeli jets continued to pound areas of Gaza, killing at least 45 people on Thursday, including 23 people in a strike that hit several houses in the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical workers said. The Israeli military said it hit dozens of targets in Gaza overnight, including what it said were weapons storage dumps, sniper positions and tunnels. Speculation around a possible ceasefire agreement grew after US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said the White House was preparing a draft document that could provide the basis for an agreement. However, it was unclear what changes to previous proposals were being considered that might overcome the deep differences between Hamas and Israel that have stymied previous attempts to restore a ceasefire deal that broke down in March after only two months. Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm completely and be dismantled as a military and governing force and that all of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza must come back before it will agree to end the war. Hamas has rejected the demand to give up its weapons and says Israel must commit to ending the war for a deal to work. Israel has come under increasing international pressure, with many European countries that have normally been reluctant to criticize Israel openly demanding an end to the war and a major humanitarian relief effort.
