Israel’s Supposed Aid Scheme Is Killing Palestinians

At around 4 a.m. on June 9, Osama Jamal Shalah stepped outside his shelter in Al-Mawasi, a narrow strip of what was once quiet farmland on the edge of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, now blanketed with tents. Covering just 3 percent of the occupied territory, it has become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.

Along with dozens of other men, Shalah walked in silence and dread. His destination was an aid distribution point in Rafah, in the far south of Gaza, run by the Israeli-approved, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). He has made this trek more than six times, a gruelling walk of nearly 4 kilometres, stepping over corpses, and sometimes crawling or sprinting to dodge gunfire from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and bombs dropped by Israeli quadcopters overhead. Like many others, he does this out of desperation: he risks his life to go out and find something to eat for his wife and four children, who range in age from twelve to sixteen.

“It’s like a gamble with death,” Shalah says from his tent in Al-Mawasi, which Israel had previously designated a humanitarian safe zone. “You either leave dead, or you leave broken, and you haven’t gotten anything.” On that June morning, he almost lost the gamble.

He reached one of the GHF sites in Rafah a couple of hours later. He waited for about ten hours for the site to open; between 3 and 4 p.m., he says, gunfire erupted. “I felt a feeling like a missile coming into me,” Shalah recalls. “Within seconds, there was no one around me. Everyone else was hiding because they were all scared…. The shooting continued.” Alone and bleeding, Shalah stumbled through the chaos. “I didn’t know where exactly I was hit. I pleaded to the people, ‘I am injured,’ but of course they were all scared. Some were too scared to raise their heads because of the shooting, and some were waiting for [the distribution centre] to open up so they could go get [aid].”

Eventually, he found a friend—someone he knew would not hurt him “even though he needed the aid”—who brought him to a nearby field hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The bullet had entered Shalah’s chest and exited through his back, tearing through soft tissue and causing internal damage. He underwent multiple surgeries; he had lost a lot of blood. Doctors say the recovery will be long and uncertain. “Thank God, with time I will recover,” he says.

Since October 2023, Israel’s military has systematically undermined the existing humanitarian infrastructure that has long served Gaza’s population under occupation. It has banned the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—the main lifeline for millions of Palestinians—from operating. In addition to obstructing them from delivering aid, Israeli forces have directly attacked UN agencies and international NGOs, including lethal strikes on their personnel and premises. More than 400 aid workers and over 1,000 health workers have been killed in Gaza. A UN-backed food security report recently declared a famine in Gaza City and projected that it might spread to the surrounding areas, including Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, where Shalah lives. The widespread starvation is driven by Israel’s eleven-week siege between March and May, the near-total disappearance of goods from the market, and soaring prices for what little remains—GHF sites have become Palestinians’ last resort. In late July, Israel announced “daily humanitarian pauses” to allow aid through; that same day, it also announced it would airdrop aid to Gaza. The UN has criticized these airdrops as being inefficient, costly, and dangerous: in early August, one falling pallet struck and killed a fifteen-year-old Palestinian boy.

The GHF has been controversial since its establishment in February 2025. It was part of a proposal by Israel for an alternative to the existing aid system in Gaza, and would provide food staples. Run primarily by American private contractors, it launched on May 27 with four distribution points located in militarized zones: three in Rafah, in the south, and one in Netzarim, near the centre of the territory. These sites, located in regions Israel has designated militarized zones, replaced the 400 non-militarized distribution points that the UN and other humanitarian organizations had operated during the most recent temporary ceasefire earlier this year; Israel has claimed this will prevent aid looting by Hamas.

But the GHF’s own executive director resigned in late May, the day before the GHF began operations, stating that the organization could not adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” The GHF-centred aid scheme has been almost universally condemned by rights groups for its violation of the principle of humanitarian impartiality and what these groups have said could also be a violation of international law, including complicity in war crimes. Danny Glenwright, president and CEO of Save the Children Canada, says the militarized model “is dangerous, dehumanizing, and unnecessary.” Its shortcomings were quickly laid bare when chaotic scenes around distribution points turned deadly.

Crowds typically gather hours in advance, often with no knowledge of when—or if—the gates will open. In August, Doctors Without Borders published a report noting that the GHF posts opening times on social media, but that these posts can sometimes appear in the middle of the night, with little notice, and that the sites can open and close within minutes. The report also describes extreme levels of violence and killings at GHF sites—primarily targeting young Palestinian men but also women and children. “This is not aid. It is orchestrated killing,” the report says. Glenwright similarly describes a system in which Israel directs civilians into heavily militarized zones to access basic supplies, all under armed surveillance. There, people seeking aid—often corralled into fenced-in, densely packed areas—are routinely fired upon by the Israeli military. In late June, Save the Children reported that children had been killed or injured in more than half of the attacks on food distribution sites in Gaza since the GHF began operating.

On July 21, the United Nations human rights office announced that it had recorded over 1,000 killings of Palestinians, mostly at GHF sites, since the end of May. Shalah and others say Israeli forces lining the distribution sites kept firing on crowds approaching them. Shalah has seen quadcopters hover overhead before explosions scattered desperate aid seekers. Those shot or bombed often have great difficulty getting medical treatment, if they’re able to access it at all. On social media, families have posted about missing relatives, presumed dead, within these militarized zones.

Also on July 21, the foreign ministers of thirty countries, including Canada, and the EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management signed a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”

The Israeli military has issued statements that soldiers near distribution sites fire “warning shots” into the air to restore order—or at those deemed suspicious for moving in the direction of Israeli troops. It also disputes the number of Palestinians killed. In late June, the newspaper Haaretz reported that Israeli soldiers have been ordered to fire at crowds of unarmed Palestinians; the IDF’s Military Advocate General has reportedly said it would open an investigation into possible war crimes.

Before the GHF was introduced, aid distribution—mostly managed by UN agencies and local and international NGOs—was far more humane. These aid organizations usually kept databases of recipients’ needs and locations and sent text messages to families, inviting them to come pick up aid packets. “Back then, we’d get a message and go. There was no fear,” says Shalah’s wife, Riham.

The GHF system was never designed for civilians, says Amjad Al Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Government Organizations Network and a long-time humanitarian aid worker from Gaza. “It was designed to serve the Israeli occupation, whether politically or for security. It is for the people’s displacement.”

Al Shawa argues that this mechanism is part of a broader campaign to ultimately empty large sections of the enclave, in preparation for deeper occupation or annexation, and to destroy the humanitarian system in the Gaza Strip. “These are not distribution points,” Al Shawa says. “They are militarized zones. Armed groups control the flow of food. Civilians arrive desperate and leave traumatized—if they leave at all.”

All this has spawned a new strain of violence in the Gaza Strip, perpetrated by desperate looters and gangs—at least one of which is funded by Israel. On June 5, in response to defence sources quoted by the country’s media, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly confirmed that he is arming a clan in Gaza that opposes Hamas, framing the move as saving the lives of Israeli soldiers. (In a Facebook post, Yasser Abu Shabab, the head of the militia reportedly receiving weapons, denied any connection with Israel.)

Both Palestinian civilians and aid workers have accused the groups of criminal activity, including assaults on civilians and looting of aid convoys. In a December 2024 interview with the New York Times, Abu Shabab denied looting aid trucks on a large scale. Still, the consequences have been devastating. Some gangs include members who were known criminals before the war; they have added a new and terrifying layer to the suffering in Gaza.

Tamer Al Abadla, thirty-eight, and his younger brother left their tent in the Al Mawasi area at 3 a.m. on June 2, hoping to beat the crowds to an aid distribution site. They joined a group of men who coordinated with a local guide. The guide promised a shortcut—a treacherous path over soft sand, pitted terrain, and unlit stretches lined with barbed wire. They hoped to shorten the distance during which they’d have avoided Israeli gunfire from about a kilometre to just under half.

Al Abadla and his brother walked in the dark, around pits and artificial sandy dunes created by the Israeli army to force fighters to expose themselves. They stepped through barbed wire and dodged gunfire.

He remembers a woman falling while they ran toward the GHF distribution site, leading to a crush of men almost tripping over her. “My brother and I had to push people back so she could get up,” he says, and so that she could stay together with her children, who were accompanying her. “If you fall, you die.”

As they neared the distribution site, gunfire broke out once more. Al Abadla, unfamiliar with the chaos, asked how they would know when it was safe to move. He was told: once the shooting stops, you run.

While hiding behind a sand embankment, he and his brother watched as people rushed out, yelling at others to move quickly. The urgency, Tamer realized, was not because of the gunfire but because those inside had hoarded what little aid there was. “This was all a fabrication so that no one attacks them and takes the food in their hands,” he says.

He saw someone leaving the site with an empty bag. “That’s when I realized there was nothing left inside,” he said.

Still determined to return with something, Al Abadla, who, at this point, had split up from his brother, eventually found a single can of cheese. He grabbed boxes to use to make a fire and began the long walk back. By then, it was 6 a.m. On the way home, a man he recognized offered a deal: he’d give Al Abadla a share of his supplies in exchange for help carrying them. They walked together, one of them carrying the food while the other kept watch, switching roles every 100 metres or so. They kept going until they reached the main road, which leads to the sea. “He opened his bag, gave me a kilo of flour, hummus, and pasta. I put them in my bag and left.” He went home on a donkey cart.

Ahmed Yasser Inshasi, twenty-three, left his tent at 11 p.m. on June 2, hoping to return with a few basic items: some flour, pasta, beans, and oil. Instead, by the next day, he would get thirteen stitches without anesthesia, his hand having been sliced open in a struggle not with soldiers or drones but with a man as desperate as he was. It was his first time attempting to collect aid from one of the GHF points. He hasn’t been back since.

“I packed everything I could: lentils, cooking oil, salt,” Inshasi recalls. He was walking back when a group of around ten men stopped him. One man lunged at his stomach with a knife, and Inshasi raised his hand to protect himself. There was no ambulance. No one could help. So he tied up his own bleeding hand and walked, in shock and pain, to the nearby Red Cross field hospital.

Both Al Abadla and Inshasi have witnessed Palestinians shot at and hit with gas bombs while trying to access aid. “All those inside were suffocated; they tried to run in all directions just to get air,” says Inshasi.

In his family’s tent—where nine people live together, including his married sister and other siblings—there is nothing to eat. No flour or oil. A single kilogram of flour at the time of the interview cost 100 shekels (or about $40). A kilogram of sugar costs 360 shekels ($146). In the market, the few remaining stalls sell produce grown in any patches of farmland not yet destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. Tomatoes and potatoes each cost 102 shekels ($41) per kilogram.

Inshasi’s wound is still healing, and one of his fingers won’t move. The knife attack, he says, was almost expected. “If you’re not shot by the Israelis, the looters will get you.” The result is terror from all sides: “If you survive the Israeli bullets, you still might not survive the crowd.” He spoke, too, of his friend’s younger brother—just eighteen—killed at one of the distribution sites. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he says. “This isn’t aid—it’s an execution ground.”

On its social media channels, the GHF posts updates about the number of meals that it gives out to Palestinian families. In a Facebook post from July 31, the organization said it had distributed approximately 100 million meals. The aid packets typically contain flour, dry lentils or chickpeas, uncooked beans, and pasta. A common criticism is the lack of essentials such as bottled water, medicine, soap, menstrual pads, baby formula, and diapers.

Riham says the aid packets don’t count as meals. The food “is not cooked, and this requires wood and water, and both are missing,” she says. Israel blocks the entry of cooking gas, and drinking water is scarce. Wood sources are depleted, with one kilogram of firewood costing 9 shekels ($3.74).

Osama believes the current system is not just broken but intentionally cruel. “They say they’re distributing a million meals. But who [is doing the counting]? It’s not cooked food. It’s dry flour. And you have to risk your life to get it.”

He pauses. “Israel is not just killing us with bombs. It is humiliating us. Making us crawl, beg, bleed—for food. What we’re living now is worse than war.”