Latest news with #militaryoperations
Arab News
3 days ago
- Business
- Arab News
Israel stands condemned, but why has it taken so long?
Since the EU's recent decision to initiate a review of Israel's compliance with its obligations under international law in the EU-Israel Association Agreement, and after the UK suspended trade talks with Israel and the leaders of Canada, France, and the UK issued a joint statement condemning the expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in Israeli military operations. In one incident, nine siblings of the same family were killed, and the war is still raging. So, forgive me if I find it difficult to get too excited about these latest diplomatic maneuvers to stop the senseless bloodshed, especially as this approach is still toothless, with no work on any time frame for introducing tangible measures. It is also the case that the argument 'better late than never' hardly holds water. Yes, if those baby-steps are the start of a concerted international effort to bring the war to an end, they will become immensely valuable, but there is much doubt about how effective they will be — and if they are not, what those countries intend to do. There is also the painful and lingering question: What has taken them so long? After all, every single day of delay in stopping the war has resulted in the deaths of many dozens of people, sometimes up to 100 a day, most of them noncombatants. In late May, nine of the 10 children of Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar and her husband Dr. Hamid were killed in an Israeli airstrike while she was on duty in the Nasser medical hospital. Only Hamid and one of their children survived, although both were badly injured. How could anyone remain indifferent in the face of such a tragedy, and one that could have been avoided, had the terms of the ceasefire agreed in January been adhered to? This is just one case of an entire family or a large part of them being wiped out in this war. If this heartbreaking tragedy does not move the world sufficiently to ensure that the Israeli government stops this war, what will? All the alarm bells regarding how Israel would conduct the war in Gaza were ringing from the first week of the conflict. Without taking anything away from the genuine anger at what Hamas inflicted on Oct. 7, the wish for revenge, and not only against those who carried out the attack, but against the entire population of Gaza, was instantly apparent. The unsubstantiated claim that every person in Gaza was complicit in the massacre should have been a warning sign. Moreover, between a government that failed to defend its people with horrendous consequences and would not admit to that failure, and senior Cabinet ministers who harbor messianic fantasies of expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, annexing the Strip and rebuilding settlements there, the likelihood of a proportionate response was always close to nil. Hence, it should not have taken the EU, UK, and Canada 19 long and blood-soaked months to figure this out. Every single day of delay has resulted in the deaths of dozens of people. Yossi Mekelberg Part of the explanation for the lack of will on the part of those who have suddenly found their voice in the past week or two and described what some Israeli ministers are suggesting will be the next stage in the war in Gaza as 'extremist,' 'dangerous' and 'monstrous' is that their working assumption has been that only Washington can make a difference, and that at best they could only play a supporting role. This has been more a case of relinquishing responsibility and avoiding friction, with Israel particularly, in the hope that either the US would use its influence to end the war, or the conflict would just run its course. This has proved to be misguided. In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, most of the world, and with good reason, showed its support for Israel's collective pain and trauma. However, at the same time it was irresponsible and shortsighted to give an extreme right-wing government led by a populist leader who happens also to be on trial for corruption, and whose sole interest is political survival at any cost, a blank check to respond to the massacre. For Europe, including the UK, what happens in the region is consequential and can have an immediate impact, whether it affects energy security, trade routes, radicalization within their own societies, or threatens a refugee crisis. Notwithstanding Europe's declared commitment to ensure human rights, Brussels also underestimates the enormous economic, diplomatic, and social power it has over Israel, not to harm its security, but to do the exact opposite: to save the country from itself when it is being governed by a reckless government. Moreover, at least some European powers should feel a moral and historical obligation for being the root cause of this conflict and for letting it fester for so long. It is nothing short of shocking that only in the past two weeks have there been some signs of concerted effort in Europe, out of despair at being unable to talk any sense into the Israeli government, or to stop the war and allow adequate humanitarian aid to enter the enclave. The EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas explained the reason for its review of the association agreement that gives Israel many economic and scientific advantages as being the 'catastrophic' situation in Gaza, with Israel 'potentially' in breach of its commitments to human rights in the agreement. In the UK Parliament, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, said that the suspension of trade talks was a response to both the prevention of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, and Israel's intention, as stated by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, to 'cleanse' the enclave, with resident Palestinians 'being relocated to third countries.' And, out of character, Germany, which traditionally refrains from criticizing Israel, has felt that it can no longer stand on the sidelines, with its new Chancellor Friedrich Merz declaring that to cause such suffering to the civilian population 'can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism.' Declarations and statements aside, reviewing agreements and suspending talks are not going to change Israel's course of action. At this juncture in the war, as it once more deploys massive forces on the border and inside Gaza, and with the government's ill intentions out in the open, Europe, the UK, and Canada will have to go beyond 'suspending' and 'reviewing.' If they do, it might also serve as a wake-up call for more Israelis to take to the streets and stop this murderous madness by its government.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on problems in the Air Corps: Ireland's no-fly zone
The shortage of air traffic controllers in the Air Corps , which threatens to curtail military operations, is the most extreme manifestation yet of the recruitment problems facing the Defence Forces. The move to five-day-a-week, day-time-only flying operations at Casement Aerodrome is of a piece with Naval Service vessels being tied up because of crew shortages and in some cases going on patrol without functioning main weapons. It also mirrors the difficulties experienced by the Army in meeting EU and UN commitments. Paradoxically, the State's need for a functioning Defence Force – and in particular an Air Corps and Naval Service – has probably not been greater since a state of emergency was declared during the second World War. Incursions into Irish air space and territorial waters are on the increase as east-west tensions escalate. The communication cables that criss-cross the Irish sea bed are seen to be both particularly vulnerable and uniquely important. A number of specific issues lie behind the shortage of air traffic controllers, as is the case with shortages of similarly key personnel in the Naval Service and Army. For air traffic controllers, it is the allure of work in the private sector for better pay and conditions. Controllers leaving for the public sector is not a new phenomenon but to date the rate of attrition has been sustainable. READ MORE This is no longer the case and the implications of reduced flying operations for Garda and air ambulance operations as well as the security of the State mandate action. There are a number of stop gap measures that can be put in place, such as retention payments which have been sought previously by the Defence Forces. But ultimately the issue of staff retention can only be addressed by making careers in the Defence Forces an attractive option. This is a about more than pay and conditions. It also includes culture and values. Until these deficits are addressed the Minister for Defence's vision of an expanded Air Corps which could ultimately operate modern fighter jets is the stuff of fantasy.
Russia Today
5 days ago
- General
- Russia Today
Russian military hits Ukrainian commando HQ – MOD (VIDEO)
Russian forces have carried out precision strikes on a facility used by Ukrainian special operations forces, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced Thursday. The targeted site, located in Ukraine's Nikolaev Region, reportedly included a munitions depot, a vehicle hangar, a command post, and a dormitory for commandos. The strike was carried out using Geran-2 long-range drones and Iskander-M missiles, according to the ministry. Officials suggested that foreign nationals fighting for Kiev may have been killed in the attack. Footage released by the ministry and mapping details of the strike point to the location as Ochakov, a key port city near the junction of the Black Sea and the Dnieper–Bug estuary. The Dnieper River forms a natural dividing line between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the is reported to serve as a base for British-assisted naval drone operations, from which Ukraine has launched attacks using unmanned surface vessels against Russian targets in Crimea. Just south of the city lies the Kinburn Spit, a narrow strip of land connected to Russia's Kherson Region. Ukrainian forces have attempted to seize the position several times, while Russian troops have used it to launch strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have ramped up long-range drone attacks inside Russian territory, amid pressure from Washington for Kiev to engage in direct peace negotiations with Moscow. The Russian military has responded by targeting suspected drone assembly sites and other strategic installations. The strike on Ochakov appeared to be part of such nighttime operations.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Military Is Doing New Things With AI
It's probably no surprise to people who understand the ramifications of new AI tools that Uncle Sam is quickly working to integrate these into military operations. But what does this look like on the ground? A few days ago, I wrote about a presentation by Colonel Tucker Hamilton about what warfighters need in terms of technology, and where we discussed the landmark of an AI running a military drone for the first time. I especially liked his phrase 'battleground of things.' Today there's more from an interview that I did with Sean Batir, CTO of Maven, a company that's helping the military to deploy new approaches to artificial intelligence. During the interview, Batir broke down some of the principles that experts are using in innovating in these ways. One is the enhancement of accuracy: 'Essentially, many of our models now are able to actually meet or exceed human detection, classification and (standards for) performance,' he said. Another has to do with interconnectedness and systems integration. 'No system, kinetic or non-kinetic, is an island,' he said. 'In other words, different types of systems are typically horizontally integrated, and not always so vertically integrated. So interoperability of interfaces to share data, models, targets and detections - that has improved, because now we're actually having more stable and standardized methods to pass that data between different types of modern systems and infrastructure.' The third is something you might call 'location visibility.' From Batir: 'We're increasing the speed of being able to locate these types of dynamic and moving objects on the battlefield. … I think what we're observing right now is that as AI capabilities are going to be integrated into various military flows, these types of triggers are actually getting integrated into how imagery and video are exploited. And essentially, if you have to think about military operations, the reality of it is like, if you can't see it, you can't perform an operation. And so we're noticing that the adversaries are now able to also discern an object from a non object, which is also accelerating their ability to, what we would term it as, execute the speed of conflict.' Later, Batir talked about that cultural change, of going from a place like MIT, into the Pentagon, where a vastly different culture holds sway. Still, he suggested, some things carry over. 'That critical thinking that you learn in undergrad, I think, is so translatable,' he said. I asked Batir what it's like to be in meetings at the Pentagon, what his drive is like, what his day looks like. He said phones are not allowed in meetings, to promote attentiveness. '(The fact that) you're forced to be super-present probably has its advantages, given the fact that if you're making, you know, national-level decisions, you want everyone to be fully present and (feel) like they are with you at all times,' he said. Here's a through line from the interview to something that I've been hearing about a lot, and that I think just makes intuitive sense when it comes to technology. In a way, it goes back to that term: 'battleground of things' or more generally, 'IaaS?' In a smart system, connecting elements is key. 'The idea is that our data and our detections are fed into other platforms,' Batir said, describing Maven solutions. 'Those other platforms are not always our own agencies. They belong to those other groups that you just mentioned. The idea is that through our program, we're actually able to build a sort of a tapestry of connected sensors from all those branches of both the armed forces and the intelligence agencies that participate in this, into a unified AI network. And so normally, a lot of the systems are Balkanized because of their history, of how they've evolved. And so our goal, right, is that we're kind of basically bringing those together.' When asked whether the firm focuses on computer vision or LLMs, Batir said Maven does both, in a sort of 'multi-model' approach. As for risk: On one hand, Batir pointed out, it's not always beneficial to wait for perfection. 'Our philosophy is that perfection is the enemy of progress,' he said. 'And so, as long as we can ensure that the risks are very upfront, that we are clear about metrics, we don't want to prevent people from being able to use a capability that's available, because it's not 100%.' However, there are other standards for mission-critical systems. 'In terms of real-world situations where lives are at stake, there is an entire risk acceptance framework,' Batir added. 'That's when people outside of maybe the pure technology space come in. We have things called, you know, disclosure officers. We have legal review. There is still a very critical manual process, especially when you're talking about potential loss of life. And so there is a process that exists to bring in that element of careful adjudication.' I thought all of this illuminates what's going on in DoD right now, as we take part in the fruits of AI. Watch the video for questions from the audience about Ukraine and other concerns.
ABC News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
As Gaza faces starvation, a new plan weaponises humanitarian aid — what can be done? - ABC Religion & Ethics
On 19 May, the Israeli Prime Minister's office announced that, after blocking all food from entering Gaza for eleven weeks, it would allow a limited amount of 'basic food' into the besieged territory. Earlier in May, the authoritative multi-agency Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) stated that Gaza's 'entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation'. But it was not humanitarian concern that evidently motivated Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to allow some food to reach Gaza's starving people: the move, he said, was necessary because 'a famine crisis' would interfere with 'the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting to defeat Hamas'. The food announcement came at the end of a week in which more than 370 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombardment, adding to the more than 53,000 people killed so far during Israel's military response to the events of 7 October 2023. It came hours after Israel's military began a new round of 'extensive ground operations' in Gaza aimed at 'total victory'. Here, the 'humanitarian' gesture of allowing food into Gaza was directly tied to the military objective of continued devastation and occupation. Which is to say, Gaza's people would be prevented from starving so that they can continue to be forcibly displaced from one part of the besieged territory to another — and ultimately, according to some in the Israeli government, out of Gaza altogether. Siege warfare and international support In the nineteen months since Israel began its military campaign in Gaza, food has become a battleground and a weapon of war. Back in October 2023, Retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland argued that Israel should present the people of Gaza with two choices: 'to stay and to starve, or to leave'. Eiland, a former head of the Israeli National Security Council who was then an advisor to Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, proposed that Israel should impose a complete siege on the territory and destroy its water facilities; if people don't leave, he wrote, 'they will starve not because of the Israeli bombs but because there will be no water in Gaza'. As he wrote: I believe that the only effective way to achieve that strategic goal is to impose a dramatic, continuous, and strict siege over Gaza … In order to make the siege effective, we have to prevent others from giving assistance to Gaza … People might ask whether we want the people of Gaza to starve. We do not. Therefore, the people of Gaza will have to leave — either temporarily or permanently — via the border with Egypt. When the people have evacuated, and the only ones left in Gaza are Hamas, and when food water has run out … then at some point Hamas will either be completely destroyed or surrender or agree to evacuate Gaza … Any other measure short of this will not be effective. For months, the media debated the merits of what was euphemistically referred to as Eiland's 'controversial proposal'. His stark defence of the possibility of starving civilians as part of what could be considered an ethnic cleansing campaign conflicted with the claims of Israel's government and its supporters that Israel was facilitating aid to civilians while preventing Hamas from commandeering it. Even as Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant imposed a 'complete siege' of the Gaza Strip, Western leaders either gave Israel the benefit of the doubt or were non-committal. Asked on 10 October 2023 whether Israel's complete siege was justified, Foreign Minister Penny Wong reaffirmed Australia's stance of 'solidarity' with Israel and reiterated 'its right to defend itself'. When pressed whether 'that right to defend itself' extends 'to what looks like collective punishment', she answered: Well, I think it's always very difficult from over here to make judgements about what security approach other countries take. We've said Israel has a right to defend itself. We call for all hostages to be released. But we also have a principal position which we would advocate to all nations and all groups in all situations, which is we would urge for the protection of civilian lives and restraint, which ensures, as far as possible, that that occurs. Even as major human rights and humanitarian NGOs and UN figures concluded that Israel was using starvation as a method of warfare, and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for, among other things, 'the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare', many Western politicians persisted in characterising Gaza's suffering as a 'tragic' situation. In May 2024, former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress that he did 'not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance' into Gaza, despite the State Department's own Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration having concluded the opposite. The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen noted in January 2025 that the 'humanitarian situation remains grim in Gaza', but continued to provide what the genocide scholar William Schabas has termed 'very unconditional support for Israel'. Throughout 2024, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeatedly stated that Australia is 'deeply concerned about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza'. But while he called for 'safe, unimpeded and sustained access for humanitarian supplies', he did not explicitly single out Israeli for blocking that access in the first place. In January 2025, a six-week ceasefire was negotiated between Israel and Hamas that would see dozens of hostages returned to Israel and humanitarian aid pour into Gaza. This ended on 2 March, when the Netanyahu government once again imposed a blockade to prevent all food, medicine and fuel from entering Gaza. preventing the entry of all food. This time, however, a devastated Gaza had far less capacity to withstand the siege. Over the previous year and a half, Israel had destroyed much of the infrastructure that sustains life in Gaza: bakeries, food, stores, agricultural land, flour mills, orchards, fishing boats, water tanks, hospitals, homes, ambulances and the electricity generators and solar panels that fuel water sanitation plants and sewerage treatment facilities. In May 2025, a long list of UN experts stated: Not only is delivering humanitarian aid one of Israel's most critical obligations as the occupying power, but its deliberate depletion of essential necessities, destroying of natural resources and calculated push to drive Gaza to the brink of collapse further corroborates its criminal responsibility. These acts, beyond constituting grave international crimes, follow alarming, documented patterns of genocidal conduct … The world is watching. Will Member States live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger, and disease, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity? As the threat of mass civilian deaths from starvation grew imminent and UN agencies warned that their food supplies had run out, criticisms mounted even among those nations who had stood by Israel thus far. On 13 May, French President Emmanuel Macron described Israel's blocking of aid and continued bombing as 'shameful' and 'unacceptable'. On 17 May, leaders of Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain and Norway announced in a joint statement that they 'will not be silent in front of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes in Gaza'. While the United States has not criticised Israel's siege, President Donald Trump has at least acknowledged that 'a lot of people are starving' in Gaza. It was against this background that Netanyahu announced the restoration of some food access. From humanitarian camouflage to militarised humanitarianism In announcing the resumption of some aid into Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu indicated that 'Israel will act to deny Hamas the ability to seize control of the distribution of humanitarian aid in order to ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas terrorists'. Israel's security cabinet has thus approved a new militarised aid delivery system that would displace the existing aid infrastructure — especially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which Israel has long accused of perpetuating the idea of the Palestinian right of return, and has sought to destroy, including, most recently, by banning it from all territory it controls. Instead, Israel has announced it will rely on a body called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Established in January and headquartered in Geneva, the GHF's marketing materials claim it will restore a 'vital lifeline' for Gaza's civilians while preventing 'aid diversion'. It proposes to establish four 'secure distribution sites', each capable of providing 300,000 people with pre-packaged food rations and hygiene kits. Israeli officials have said that civilians would be able to go to the sites to receive weekly aid packages, and the GHF has committed to making the plan operational by the end of May 2025, claiming it will provide 300 million meals over 90 days. There have been numerous such initiatives over the past nineteen months. The Biden administration air-dropped packaged meals into north Gaza, and spent $230 million on a floating 'humanitarian pier' which operated for a total of around twenty days before the US dismantled it, claiming it had 'achieved its intended effect'. These initiatives provided what the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, Francesca Albanese, called 'humanitarian camouflage', which has the effect of avoiding the central problem of Israel's siege and shielding Israel from accountability for its consequences. Israel's latest plan is more dystopian than these earlier initiatives. On the one hand, Netanyahu has been quite explicit about the fact that provision of 'basic food' is necessary to bolster support for Israel's brutal military campaign. He said that US senators, some of whom are 'our best friends in the world', had told him that scenes of desperate hunger in Gaza risked draining support and bringing Israel to 'a red line, to a point where we might lose control'. 'It is for this reason', Netanyahu stressed, 'in order to achieve victory, we have to somehow solve this problem.' His coalition partner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was even more explicit: 'we have been striking Hamas and reducing Gaza to ruins unprecedented in modern warfare — and yet the world has not stopped us'. Israel would now ensure 'that only the most essential supplies reach civilians, primarily to prevent international accusations of war crimes and avoid halting our military campaign'. But the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation represents something more alarming than humanitarian camouflage. Israel's aid plan is to weaponise 'humanitarianism' in the service of the displacement and possible permanent expulsion of the residents of Gaza from their territory. The Executive Director of the GHF, Jake Wood, is a US marine corps veteran and a former sniper in Iraq and Afghanistan. With a board of directors comprised of people with expertise in finance, US national security, corporate law and (in one instance) humanitarianism, GHF claims it will offer 'principled action and operational discipline' while operating 'in strict adherence to humanitarian principles'. Despite being established on the initiative of the Israeli government, the GHF has attempted to distance itself from Israel's military and its destruction of Gaza by claiming that Israeli military will not be stationed in the vicinity of the distribution hubs. Instead, it says the aid distribution sites will be secured by 'experienced professionals, including personnel who previously secured the Netzarim Corridor during the recent ceasefire'. The so-called Netzarim Corridor, which Israel established to sever northern Gaza from southern Gaza, was secured by the private security company 'UG Solutions', which is based in North Carolina, managed by former US Special Forces soldier Jameson Govoni and staffed by contractors with US special forces backgrounds. Initial reports state that the same firm will guard the GHF's aid distribution sites, alongside another private military company, Safe Reach Solutions, which is run by former CIA paramilitary head Philip Reilly. Moreover, there are reports that Israel's cabinet has approved plans to subject Palestinians to biometric screening as a condition of receiving aid. And Netanyahu has said the distribution sites will be in 'a sterile area under IDF control'. Here, we see the apotheosis of military humanitarianism, in which private companies subordinate the provision of food to the military imperatives of a government that leading human rights, humanitarian and UN experts and leading genocide scholars all contend is carrying out a genocide. The United States has thrown its support behind Israel's plan to by-pass the existing humanitarian system, with its Ambassador to Israel saying that Trump believes it is urgent to ensure that food is 'distributed safely inside Gaza and Hamas shouldn't be able to steal it'. Israeli media has described the aid plan as a 'US-Israeli initiative' and Trump's Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, reportedly briefed the UN Security Council on the plan and warned that the United States would withdraw funding from UN agencies that rejected the plan. Trump himself has said that the US will 'help the people of Gaza get some food', but that 'Hamas is making it impossible because they're taking everything that's brought in'. The existing humanitarian community, in contrast, has condemned the plan. Both the UN Secretary General and the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator announced that they will not cooperate with it. In early May, the UN's aid coordination office rejected Israel's proposal to distribute aid through militarised hubs as 'a deliberate attempt to weaponise the aid'. The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief CoordinatorTom Fletcher gave a blunt message to those proposing such initiatives: '[L]et's not waste time. We already have a plan.' Fletcher stressed that the UN had the necessary people, distribution networks and trust of communities in Gaza. 'And we have the aid itself — 160,000 pallets of it — ready to move. Now.' Israel's plan, he said, 'makes starvation a bargaining chip' and provides 'a fig leaf for further violence and displacement'. Jens Laerke, head of the UN's aid coordination office, noted that 'Israeli officials have sought to shut down the existing aid system run by 15 UN agencies and 200 NGOs and partners'. A joint statement by the Humanitarian Country Team — which brings together heads of UN entities and humanitarian NGOs — said that the plan 'contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic — as part of a military strategy'. They warned of the dangers of 'driving civilians into militarised zones to collect rations' and argued that this risked lives, including those of humanitarian workers themselves. Given that Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it has previously designated as humanitarian zones, and that the death toll of aid workers in Gaza had reached a staggering 408 by April 2025, these fears are well-founded. The announcement of the new aid plan comes only a month after Israeli troops killed fifteen relief workers and buried them alongside their shredded ambulance in a shallow grave. Launched at the very time that Israel has intensified its military assault on Gaza and ministers proclaim the intent to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian territory, there are very good grounds to fear that aid distribution centres will be a means to displace Palestinians to areas from which they can then be expelled. Presented with such criticisms, the GHF Executive Director Jake Wood gave an ultimatum to the existing humanitarian community: The community is going to face a choice. This is going to be the mechanism by which aid can be distributed in Gaza. Are you willing to participate? When asked if he had evidence for the claim that Hamas has commandeered aid on a significant scale — which is the premise of GHF's operation and appears repeatedly in its marketing material — Wood responded 'it doesn't really matter': Israel controls access to Gaza, and if, if it is their belief that there is a large percentage of aid that is being interdicted by Hamas and other non-state actors … then we have no choice but to create a mechanism which operates in that construct and in that framing. That framing, however, is one in which the provision of humanitarian relief is an accessory to a brutal military campaign, used to move starving people from one part of the destroyed territory to another in order to receive food. This may not matter to 'humanitarian' mercenaries, but it should matter deeply to anyone who cares about the traditional humanitarian goal of alleviating human suffering. Famine expert Alex De Waal has described the plan as 'an individualised version of late colonial counterinsurgency', in which militaries pushed civilians into villages in which they would be fed, while starving those outside. De Waal mentions Britain's brutal counterinsurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. This was one of many situations that prompted national liberation movements and diplomats from post-colonial states to revise the laws of armed conflict in the 1970s, and ultimately to adopt the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibited the starvation of civilians as a method of war. Breaking the siege What opportunities are there to challenge Israel's siege? Against fatalism, there are those who have continued to resist both Israel's framing of the problem and its control over the entry of food to the territory. In early May, a 'Freedom Flotilla' that attempted to break the blockade and deliver aid to Gaza was attacked by drones in waters outside Malta, breaching its hull and causing a fire. The attack recalled Israel's 2010 attack on a previous Gaza aid flotilla, the Mavi Marmara , which was attempting to deliver ten thousand tonnes of aid to break Israel's long siege of the territory. Nine people were killed in that attack. In May 2025, Palestinian human rights and civil society organisations — including the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the respected human rights organisation Al Haq — issued a call for a Diplomatic Humanitarian Convoy to Gaza. The call, which has now been signed by over 700 human rights and humanitarian organisations worldwide, asks states to 'reject the weaponisation of aid and Israel's planned distribution mechanisms, which militarise relief efforts and bypass UN agencies and humanitarian actors'. Instead, it calls on states to publicly commit to joining a 'humanitarian convoy' by sending 'official diplomatic missions to accompany the aid trucks into Gaza via the Rafah Crossing'. In the face of the weaponisation of aid, such a convoy, according to the call, 'would mark a historic step to break the siege, end the starvation, and affirm the world's rejection of hunger as a weapon of war.' As Israel seeks to control and instrumentalise humanitarian aid as a weapon in Gaza, and the UN warns that '14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours' without food aid, this call is more important than ever. On 19 May, Australia signed on to a joint donor statement calling on Israel to 'allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza immediately and enable the UN and humanitarian organisations to work independently and impartially to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity'. The statement goes on: Israel's security cabinet has reportedly approved a new model for delivering aid into Gaza, which the UN and our humanitarian partners cannot support. They are clear that they will not participate in any arrangement that does not fully respect the humanitarian principles. Humanitarian principles matter for every conflict around the world and should be applied consistently in every war-zone. The UN has raised concerns that the proposed model cannot deliver aid effectively, at the speed and scale required. It places beneficiaries and aid workers at risk, undermines the role and independence of the UN and our trusted partners, and links humanitarian aid to political and military objectives. Humanitarian aid should never be politicised, and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change. This is an important if awfully belated step. But it will take more than statements to prevent Israel from weaponising humanitarian aid. Any state that is 'deeply concerned' about Gaza's humanitarian situation should heed the call for a Diplomatic Humanitarian Convoy and take concrete action to break the siege. Jessica Whyte is a Scientia Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She researches human rights, humanitarianism and economic sanctions.
