‘Not the way to do it’: Israel’s new Gaza aid system criticised
Hardin Lang from Refugees International says it’s incomprehensible why Israel has set up its own Gaza aid distribution system when the UN and other international groups have decades of experience.
“Mounting the kind of operation to keep famine at bay is very complex and logistics-intensive. It is not something you turn the keys over to an operation that is just finding its feet. So if you’re trying to meet humanitarian needs, this is not the way to do it,” Lang told Al Jazeera.
He noted Jake Wood, executive director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), announced his resignation because the organisation could not adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence”.
While the long-established UN-led distribution process had 400 sites throughout Gaza, the GHF has only four “mega” ones for its 2.3 million people, Lang said.
“If the point of the project is to meet the humanitarian need, then you go with distribution sites throughout the Gaza Strip – much like what the United Nations and international humanitarian community have established.”
Chaotic scenes proof of Israel’s failure to manage crisis it created: Gaza Government Media Office
The Government Media Office in Gaza has issued a statement about the scenes at the aid distribution point in southern Gaza, saying Israel’s project to distribute supplies “in the so-called ‘buffer zones’ has failed disastrously”.
“Thousands of starving civilians – besieged and cut off from food and medicine by the occupation for nearly 90 days – rushed to these areas in a heartbreaking scene that ended with the storming of distribution centres and the seizing of food under the crushing weight of hunger,” it said.
It added that Israeli forced had responded “by opening fire and injuring several citizens, which clearly reflects the total collapse of the so-called humanitarian track that the occupation claims to uphold”.
The office said the scenes was evidence of Israel’s failure to manage the humanitarian crisis “it deliberately created through a policy of starvation, siege, and bombing”.
It added the establishment of “buffer ghettos” for distributing limited aid “under the threat of death, bullets, and starvation does not indicate a genuine intention to address the crisis”.
“Rather, it represents a calculated political strategy to perpetuate starvation, dismantle Palestinian society, and impose politicised humanitarian tracks that serve the occupation’s security and military agenda.”
