By Ranjan Solomon
Quds News Network reports that at least 31 starving Gazan civilians were killed and dozens more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on them while seeking food at aid distribution points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US-Israeli organization assigned to deliver aid following more than 80 days of total Israeli blockade. This is yet another crime to the long list of Israel’s war crimes. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the killings “reflect the nature of these areas as mass death traps, not humanitarian relief points…. “We confirm to the entire world that what is happening is a systematic and malicious use of aid as a tool of war, employed to blackmail starving civilians and forcibly gather them in exposed killing points, managed and monitored by the occupation army and funded and politically covered by the occupation and the US administration, which bears full moral and legal responsibility for these crimes.”
And just a few hours before writing this piece, there have been reports that the Israeli occupation army killed three more Palestinians heading to receive aid from an Israeli-American aid distribution site in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip today. Dozens of Palestinians were also injured by the Israeli fire near the aid distribution site. As if all of these killing sprees were not enough, the Israeli occupied army persists with blowing up homes and buildings in eastern Gaza City, northern Gaza, and the eastern Khan Yunis areas in the southern Gaza Strip.
These killings follow Israel’s launch of a controversial aid distribution mechanism, backed by the US administration, through an American group known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Disregarding disapproval by the international community and the UN, who warned it was ethnic cleansing and forced displacement covered up as aid, at least 49 Palestinians have been killed and over 305 others injured by Israeli fire near aid distribution points in Gaza since the start of Israel’s aid distribution mechanism.
Desperately hungry people gather in large numbers at laid distribution spaces run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American organization backed by Israel. The IDF strategy is to wait until enough numbers approach the site, Israeli military vehicles then open fire, and drones drop explosives, resulting in mass casualties. These centres are like suicide points and are “extremely dangerous,” noting that ambulances had difficulty reaching the wounded due to ongoing gunfire. Some victims were evacuated using carts.
Israeli forces also fire on civilians approaching another American aid center near the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza. Medical sources at Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp reported that at least one Palestinian was killed and 20 others were injured when Israeli forces fired on crowds near the Bureij refugee camp. Israeli army spokespersons feign innocence/ignorance. Gaza’s government media contradicts these false reports and accuse Israel of “using humanitarian aid systematically and maliciously as a weapon of war to blackmail starving civilians and forcibly gather them in exposed killing zones.”
Israel set up four aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza, with intent to evacuate Palestinians from northern Gaza into the south. Israel’s aid distribution plan aims to turn the territory’s north into a “completely depopulated area.” These tactics of eliminating people by accumulating hopelessly hungry Palestinians at what are supposedly food distribution points will add points to the allegations of genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war crimes against civilians in the enclave.
In solidarity
Ranjan Solomon
2 June 2025