At least 613 killed at GHF hubs and near humanitarian convoys: UN
The United Nations human rights office has said it had recorded at least 613 killings at aid points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and near humanitarian convoys.
“We have recorded 613 killings, both at GHF points and near humanitarian convoys – this is a figure as of June 27. Since then … there have been further incidents,” Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.
Israel using private military contractors at aid points to ‘outsource genocide’
Military analyst Yusuf Alabarda has discussed with Al Jazeera why Israel is using private military contractors at aid distribution centres in Gaza, which have been the scene of routine deadly violence against Palestinians seeking aid.
Speaking from Ankara, Alabarda said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was using private security contractors in a “kind of outsourcing [of] the genocide”.
He said the private contractors at the aid distribution centres were playing a role in “ethnic cleansing and changing the demography inside Gaza”.
“One of the biggest advantages of using private military contractors [is] they are not responsible to anyone and they are under-regulated,” he said. “For this reason, many countries have used private military contractors for their dirty work to be done.”
Alabarda said Netanyahu did not want to implicate the Israeli military “in all the genocide”. “He wants to use the private contractors in the food distribution centres in order to collect intelligence, in order to shoot defenceless people, and for many different purposes.”
Starvation in Gaza ‘amounts to a form of structural genocide’
The catastrophe unfolding in Gaza cannot be understood solely through the lens of humanitarian crisis. What we are witnessing is not just a tragic consequence of war, but the deliberate use of starvation as a tool of political and demographic control. This strategy, designed to dismantle Palestinian society, amounts to a form of structural genocide.
The Israeli military and political leadership, in its pursuit of dominance and the erasure of Palestinian national aspirations, has moved beyond the tactics of bombardment and physical destruction. Today, its methods are more insidious. They target the core of Palestinian survival: Food, water, and the means to endure.
Breaking the will of a people by denying them the ability to feed themselves is not collateral damage. It is policy. According to reports from independent international bodies, more than 95 percent of Gaza’s farmland has been destroyed or rendered unusable. That figure is not just an economic loss; it is the intentional dismantling of food sovereignty, and with it, any hope of future independence.
