Israeli soldiers opened fire Tuesday morning near crowds of Palestinians walking toward a new food distribution site in southern Gaza, the Israeli military said. The Red Cross and Gaza health ministry said at least 27 people had been killed.
This was the second such shooting by Israeli forces in three days near the same aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, where thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians are coming early each day in hopes of securing a food handout. Israeli soldiers opened fire on Sunday near an approach to the same food distribution site, and Palestinian officials said they killed at least 23 people.
The shootings, which the military said occurred roughly about 500 yards from the food distribution site, were the latest chaos surrounding a contentious new Israeli-backed system for food distribution sites in Gaza, where American private contractors oversee the handout of cardboard boxes of aid.
The United Nations has criticized the new effort, saying the amount of aid being distributed falls far short of needs, with one official calling it “engineered scarcity.”
The Israeli-American initiative that began last week has only announced four aid distribution points compared with hundreds under the previous U.N.-coordinated aid handout system. And on any given day, most of the four sites are not operational.
In the latest violence on Tuesday, the Israeli military said the troops fired near “a few” people who had strayed from the designated route to the site and who did not respond to warning shots. The statement called them “suspects” and said they had “posed a threat” to soldiers. But a military spokeswoman declined to explain the nature of the perceived threat.
The military said it was aware of reports of casualties and was looking into it.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has faced mounting international criticism, including from the country’s traditional allies. Last month, Britain, France and Canada said in a joint statement that the latest Israeli threats to mount a massive offensive against Hamas, as well as its two-month blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza, were “wholly disproportionate.”
Much is riding on the fate of the new aid system.
Aid agencies say Gaza faces the threat of widespread starvation following the 80-day Israeli blockade on food deliveries from March to May.
Israel says the new system is needed to prevent Hamas from stealing and stockpiling food, as well as from financing its war effort by selling food to civilians at elevated prices. U.N. officials have argued there is no evidence that international aid was diverted by Hamas.
Huge crowds of hungry Palestinians are arriving early each morning at the new aid sites seeking food handouts. They often walk for miles on foot in the pre-dawn darkness.
But rather than orderly handouts, Palestinians witnesses described to The New York Times a chaotic scramble for whatever boxes of goods remain.
The aid program is overseen by a new and untested private group, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which pays American contractors to distribute food from sites in Israeli-occupied areas of southern Gaza. It replaced a system overseen by the United Nations, which distributed food from roughly 400 sites across the entire territory.
The foundation said it was aware of the reports of shootings “well beyond” the area of the aid site on Tuesday. But it said the site itself had operated “safely” throughout the morning.
The United Nations opposes the new system because it says it endangers civilians by forcing them to walk for miles to get food on a risky passage through Israeli military lines. They have also argued that it could facilitate an Israeli plan to displace the population of northern Gaza, as all of the Israeli-backed distribution points are in the south.
Aid groups said the latest bloodshed demonstrated the risks of the new system.
“Today’s events have shown once again that this new system of aid delivery is dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective,” Claire Manera, an emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement.
“It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.”
Many of the casualties from the shootings have been arriving at the International Committee of the Red Cross’s field hospital in Rafah, a short distance away. On Tuesday, the clinic received the bodies of 19 people as well as eight others who subsequently died from their wounds, the Red Cross said in a statement.
Jamal Azzam, a nurse at the Red Cross hospital, said in a phone interview that he had treated many young Gazans alongside his colleagues admitted for gunfire wounds. He said that in one case, several wounded Gazans were brought to the clinic in an animal cart.
“The scenes were tragic,” he said. “It was like a battlefield full of blood and injured — everyone was lying on the ground, everyone screaming and everyone shouting.”
Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, a senior administrator at Nasser Hospital, a medical center in Khan Younis a few miles from the site of the shootings, said in a phone interview that the hospital’s ability to treat the wounded had been hindered by critical equipment shortages, Dr. al-Farra said.
“For three days now, we haven’t even had sterile gauze,” he said, adding that they had been forced to borrow basic supplies from a nearby field hospital.
Some Israelis said that Hamas was trying to undermine the new system by instigating chaos and encouraging people to riot.
“Hamas is under pressure due to the food distribution operation managed by an American company, and is trying in every way to sabotage it,” Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, wrote on social media. “Hamas wants to control the food, and through it, to control the people. Israel is denying Hamas this control.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem, Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Bilal Shbair from Deir al-Balah, Gaza.
Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
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