What a nasty thing it has turned out to be. It involved subversion – Israel’s desire to ignore international tenets of humanitarian aid in favour of expediency and security – and the naked show of violent desperation. Via the shoddy US–and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation company, distribution of necessaries in the Gaza Strip through the organisation’s delivery arm, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), has been inadequate and selective.
SRS is a disreputable outfit, one lacking a résumé in humanitarian aid. Its prowess, rather, lies in the realm of military intelligence. A report from Ynet News describes its functions as “operating roadblocks, processing visual data from cameras, drones and satellites and using it to identify Hamas operatives and armed individuals.” In both practice and spirit, this seedy, cynical enterprise violates the four essential principles of humanitarian action: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.
The four sites of distribution, located in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor south of Gaza City, have been picked for reasons of control, surveillance and forced displacement. The official reason is that doing so ensures that no aid ends up in the eager hands of Hamas. “The establishment of the distribution centres,” went the first official comment on the distribution points by the IDF, “took place over the last few months, facilitated by the Israeli political echelon and in coordination with the US government.” Saliently and devastatingly, the system is intended to exclude the role of experienced aid agencies, notably that of the long abominated United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
A vicious example of this new model of aid delivery was given on May 27, with thousands of starving Palestinians descending on a distribution point in Rafah. Herded and harassed, strife duly broke out. The compound was stormed. Those working for GHF retreated after claiming to have distributed 8,000 food boxes.
Israeli troops duly opened fire. According to the enclave’s Government Media Office, the IDF “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid,” leaving 10 dead and 62 wounded. Locations for distribution were subsequently “transformed into death traps under the occupation’s gunfire.” While there is some dispute about the figures, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that staff at its Red Cross Field Hospital did receive “a mass casualty influx of 48 patients, including women and children. All were suffering from gunshot wounds.”
This bloody lapse was dismissed by the Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu as a minor blemish – there had been a “loss of control momentarily” at the distribution point. An IDF official, however, preferred to see the overall operation as a success. In keeping with standard practice, the IDF had initially denied ever firing at the desperate throng, merely letting off warning shots outside the compound.
In remarks to reporters at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo, the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, expressed alarm at “the shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.” Crucially, this was “a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities.” The whole affair was particularly galling given the pre-existing networks of humanitarian aid that UNRWA has mastered over the years. The agency, at one point, had as many as 400 distribution centres in Gaza. But Israel has made the removal and elimination of the agency’s influence a vital part of its policy, one that ties in with the agenda of crushing aspirations for Palestinian statehood.
Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, was also in no mood to accept Israel’s novel slant on providing aid. “We continue to witness a brutal humanitarian camouflage, where the red lines have led to massive atrocities.” This was part of “a deliberate strategy – aimed at masking atrocities, displacing the displaced, bombing the bombarded, burning Palestinians alive and maiming survivors.” The “language of aid” had been used to “divert international attention from legal accountability, in Israel’s attempt to dismantle the very principles upon which humanitarian law was built.”
The latest turn of events also prompted the rapporteur to reiterate her view that nothing short of a full arms embargoand the suspension of all trade with Israel would do. “The time for sanctions is now, as Israeli politicians continue to call for the extermination of babies while over 80 percent of the Israeli society, according to Israeli media, ask for the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza.”
The disgraceful deployment of select humanitarian services by GHF has already seen its head resign. In a statement, the now former executive director, Jake Wood, claimed that the Foundation had failed to adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” Middle management wonks at the GHF, despite being disappointed at the resignation, expressed readiness with the boisterous assertion that “Our trucks are loaded and ready to go.” The body planned “to scale rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead.” Much more humanitarian camouflage is in the offing.
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The distribution of “humanitarian aid” by SRS is a ruse to entice the starving Gazans in the north to move towards the “aid” distribution points in the south. Once located there the hapless Gazans will be prevented from returning to the north and thus will be forced across the border by the IDF from Rafah to the Negev Desert. Netanyahu is already pleading plausible deniability having transferred the responsibility of humanitarian aid distribution and its’ consequences to an American operated organisation of little repute.
It has never been made clearer that the Palestinians of Gaza and of The West Bank are superfluous to needs, are to be not just punished for daring to inhabit lands Israel claims as its own, given to their patriarch way back in the book of Genesis, and reiterated as they escaped from slavery in Egypt, as they tracked for forty years through the Sinai desert, being given the Ten Commandments along the way, one of which said killing people was not really a good idea, in the next word from god, they are told to totally annihilate anyone who stands in their way…. and the next instruction from that same god who said killing was not a good idea, told them to kill every one in Jericho except for Rahab and her family.
And now the Palestinians stand in the way of reclaiming their god given lands.
The UN stands in their way by daring to care for people’s suffering.
They too need to be eliminated, as does the International Court system which dares to stand in judgement of seeing gods will, the reclamation of the promised land.
Or something like that, anything but consider Palestinians as human beings, anything but extending the hand of a humanitarian to ease suffering and anything but giving Palestinians a right to the lands of their forebears.
Every day a new atrocity from Israel. The IDF and the genicdsl maniac Netanyahu, and every day more weasel words or perhaps no words at all from the Australian government. Enough.
Weasel words – Bland ambiguous words meaning nothing which politicians are known to spout so they sound as if they are saying something meaningful.
Actions speak louder than words.
Terrified as being labelled ‘anti semitic’ our politicians tremble at following the UK , Canada and France and other countries in denouncing this visible genocide taking place in full view every night on out TV screens from reputable news reportage.
As if that wasn’t enough, starvation has followed bombing of everything. Skeletal young children , rampages at a food distributing centre by desperate people and the indiscriminate killing and maiming goes on with ne’er a word of condemnation from Albanese – let alone any action.
Netanyahu- as Bert has commented earlier- has the obvious , murderous intention of eliminating all Palestinian people from Gaza and also the West Bank just because he can do so – with no intervention to stop him. The USA government is terrified of losing the Jewish vote as well as those new Christians who believe in the ‘Second Coming’ so Biden and Trump have just kept pumping vast quantities of militia to Israel. It’s a madness. Religion and politics – worse when the religious have the upper hand and control.
Today the remaining, vaguely functioning hospital in the north of Gaza has been told by Israel to empty completely – probably before it is flattened like everything else. How is Israel allowed to do this?
There will surely be a reckoning some time at least , I hope so.
The genocide unfolding in Gaza is just the latest iteration in a very long list of similar atrocities committed by humans against humans.
Wikipedia lists close to sixty similar events in recorded history.
I suspect there will be more down the track in the future.
In addition to my comment, I would like to post this article from two hours ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGL8ZCd9Tao
Recommend that everybody watches the YouTube link in Judith’s post. A searing expose & condemnation of Israel’s barbarity and the consequences engendered.