GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) said on Monday that the Israeli occupation army committed a new massacre today when its forces killed three starving civilians and injured 35 others near the US-Israeli aid distribution center in Rafah, southern Gaza.
The GMO condemned the attack as part of a systematic starvation campaign targeting vulnerable Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid.
GMO said that following today’s attack on aid seekers, the death toll from the recent Israeli massacres at the aid distribution centers in Rafah and near the Wadi Gaza Bridge has climbed to 52 martyrs, with the number of wounded reaching 340.
For its part, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemned on Sunday “the mass killings committed by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) near two aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killing and injury of dozens of starving Palestinians who had gathered in search of aid, only to find themselves exposed to direct and lethal gunfire.”
“This heinous crime is part of a series of ongoing attacks targeting Palestinians as they attempt to access humanitarian aid. It cannot be comprehended as an isolated or miscalculated incident; rather, it is part of an organized and systematic Israeli policy. Under this policy, the IOF seeks first to starve the civilian population and then humiliate and kill them as they struggle for survival,” PCHR said.
“According to information obtained by PCHR’s staff, thousands of Palestinians gather daily near the aid distribution points established by the IOF, operated by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and secured by a private US security company. Despite the large number of people gathering at these points, the available aid parcels are often limited and sufficient for only dozens or a few hundred individuals. Aid is distributed without relying on pre-registered beneficiary lists or following any organized mechanism, rendering the process chaotic and disordered. This exacerbates the suffering of the desperate crowds, which may number in the thousands, who soon find themselves exposed to Israeli gunfire in the area,” a statement released by PCHR explained.
“These developments on the ground give further evidence that this aid distribution mechanism is utterly ineffective. Despite the chaos it has inflicted and the consistent pattern of daily casualties and injuries, IOF insists on maintaining this deadly system. It has also failed to provide aid to Gaza’s starving population and its distribution points have turned instead into sites of death, humiliation, and dehumanization of Palestinian civilians, who have endured months of unprecedented levels of deliberate starvation,” PCHR elaborated.
PCHR emphasized that “the current aid distribution system has even failed to meet the bare minimum humanitarian standards. It relies on an ineffective and chaotic mechanism; according to which, insufficient food supplies enter into dangerous areas under the Israeli fire control and then thousands of starving civilians are called to come under extremely dangerous conditions only having 3 choices: to be killed by snipers or in airstrikes, to return empty-handed with no food or to take part in a humiliating fight with tens of other starving civilians to obtain a food parcel that does not even suffice for one day.”
PCHR affirmed that “maintaining this deadly and degrading aid distribution mechanism, despite recurring massacres, unequivocally exposes that Israel’s intent is not the provision of humanitarian aid but rather the systematic use of aid as a method of slow extermination and collective humiliation.”
