US contractors reveal reckless practices in Gaza aid operations
An investigation by The Associated Press news agency has found that US contractors guarding aid distribution hubs for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) use bullets, stun grenades and pepper spray against Palestinians seeking food, even if there is no threat.
The report quotes two US contractors saying that they came forward due to what they perceived as dangerous and irresponsible practices. “Security staff hired were often unqualified, unvetted, heavily armed and seemed to have an open license to do whatever they wished,” read the report.
According to one of the contractors, the Israeli army is leveraging the distribution system to access information.
Both sources said that cameras monitor distributions at each site and that American analysts and Israeli soldiers sit in a control room where the footage is screened in real time. One contractor said some cameras are equipped with facial recognition software.
Last week, a separate investigation by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper collected testimonies of Israeli soldiers who revealed that the army ordered them to shoot deliberately at unarmed people in Gaza while waiting for humanitarian aid.
GHF has ‘nothing to do with alleviating starvation in Gaza’
Mads Gilbert, an emergency medicine doctor who has spent extensive time working in Gaza, says the Gaza Health Foundation (GHF) distribution centres are “part of the Israeli occupation forces’ and the Israeli government plan to ethnically cleanse and to fulfil their goal of genocide in Gaza”.
He told Al Jazeera that the food parcels the GHF delivers “are grossly inadequate”.
“There is no dairy or eggs in the parcels – neither in physical form nor powdered form; there is no infant formula, which is desperately needed by the newborn and the children,” he added.
Gilbert also pointed out that the food “needs cooking and there are almost no cooking facilities available in Gaza”.
“The distribution organisation is aimed at using food as bait to attract starving people, to terrorise them and to kill them. The shooting of people in food lines is a war crime,” he concluded.
Let UN distribute Gaza aid: UNRWA
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in a post on X has called for investigations into the killing and injury of Palestinians trying to access food through the current US- and Israeli- backed food distribution mechanism in Gaza.
While the previous United Nations-led distribution network operated about 400 sites across the Strip, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, guarded by armed private security contractors working for a US company, has set up only four “mega-sites”, three in the south and one in central Gaza – none in the north, where conditions are most severe.
In its post, UNRWA called for the UN to “do the work” in distributing aid.
