Aid distribution centres ‘have killed more people than they helped’
Journalist and Khan Younis resident Ahmad al-Najjar has told Al Jazeera that the closure of aid distribution points operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has little negative impact for Palestinian residents on the ground.
“It’s comical to say these distribution centres are closed today, as if they had been making a major difference,” al-Najjar said. “These distribution centres have killed more people than they helped.”
Hundreds of aid seekers were killed or wounded by Israeli fire before the centres were closed earlier in the week. The journalist said one of his former neighbours was shot in the arm at a GHF distribution point.
“He said he had no other choice but to go there and risk his life because he had to feed his children,” al-Najjar said.
“The painful thing is that he used to run a restaurant before this genocide began … but, like most of the families here, now he has no source of income or food and has been put in a desperate situation.”
Israel using gangs to elbow out aid groups who are ‘witnesses to genocide’
Israel’s newly revealed cooperation with criminal gangs in Gaza has been pursued to help it achieve its war aims, including sidelining aid agencies who are “witnesses to … genocide”, says a Palestinian analyst.
Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Israel had used a criminal group led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a local clan leader in Rafah, to loot aid supplies sent through established international networks.
By doing so, it helped Israel advance an argument that the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was the “sole solution” to aid distribution in Gaza, allowing Israel to “elbow out those UN agencies who act not only as providers of humanitarian aid, but also as witnesses to Israel’s genocide on the ground”, Shehada told Al Jazeera.
The use of the group helped Israel “advance and maintain starvation and ethnic cleansing by other means, rather than by directly implicating” the Israeli military itself, he said, adding that Israel was also using the group to carry out tasks like reconnaissance, espionage and kidnappings.
Netanyahu admitted on Thursday that Israel had “activated” criminal groups in Gaza on the advice of security officials, hours after former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused him of backing the gangs.
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It was only when approached by BBC Verify that the IDF admitted it had carried out an artillery strike and said the incident was the result of "technical and operational errors".
They said troops had fired towards a "target" but the artillery had "deviated" and "wrongfully hit the Mawasi area" - a coastal strip of Khan Younis. The IDF did not provide evidence for these assertions.
And goes on about a little spat between the White House and the BBC, 2 sides of the same coin anyway.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce814ez7030o
But that seems to be what prompted this update.
