(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Israeli-American aid centers in Gaza are death traps [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-25
For Most Palestinians in Gaza, Staying Hungry is better than Risking Life to get Aid
This article shows how difficult or impossible it is for Gazans to get aid from the American-Israeli distribution centers run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The article written by Motasem A. Dalloul in the Middle East Monitor was reprinted on June 24 in Informed Comment, the blog of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole. It begins:
After more than 100 days of complete Israeli ban on the entry of aid and goods into the Gaza Strip, Gaza residents are left with no choice except risking their life to get some food for their hungry children. Everything in Gaza, including food, water and medical supplies has run out. Fuel used to operate water and sewage pumps, hospitals trucks and vehicles used to remove tons of garbage has also run out.
The article describes the desperate situation: “There is nothing in Gaza except continuous Israeli bombing
of civilians, homes, healthcare centers, schools, displacement camps and tents, communication facilities and water networks. In Gaza, people lose family members every minute. The Israeli occupation forces kill an average of one person every 15 minutes…. This is beside the deaths that result from malnutrition and dehydration.
The Monitor article provides shocking facts about the number of people killed and wounded as they seek aid from the Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution centers in southern Gaza.
According to Gaza Media Office, medical sources and human rights groups, as of 23 June 2025, the Israeli occupation forces have killed 450 starving civilians and wounded over 3,465 others near Gaza GHF’s aid distribution points. It also stated that there are confirmed reports about 39 missing.
The article points out that “most of the casualties occurred due to live fire, drone attacks and crowd crushes during chaotic aid distributions.”
According to the Monitor article, despite the extreme hardship and danger “fathers in Gaza walk long distances on foot and risk their lives in order to reach the US-Israeli aid distribution centers.”
Getting a little amount of food from any of these aid centers is extremely dangerous and lethal as the crowds of starving fathers come under live Israeli tank and gunfire. Tens of them get killed and hundreds are wounded every time they try to reach these aid centers. Sometimes, the Israeli occupation forces use quadcopter drones to drop small bombs over the heads of starving aid seekers or fire artillery shells on them, tearing them into pieces.
The Monitor article notes:
The Israeli occupation forces allow only animal carts and motorcycles to move between the southern and northern parts of the occupied Gaza Strip. People have to pay high [prices] to use these means; otherwise, they move between both sides of Gaza walking on foot.
Providing a first hand account, the Monitor article quotes Ahmad Yassin, a 35-year-old father of seven children, who walked forty kilometers from Gaza City to Rafah to get food.
“I agreed with a number of relatives and friends to travel to Rafah and get food from the US-Israeli aid distribution center located in the west of the destroyed city. Everyone had two liters of drinking water in his backpack and started our journey at 12 pm. We walked together through the coastal road, which had been destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces.”
“We arrived in Rafah after a 10-hour-walk,” Yassin said,
“but when we were about three kilometers away from the aid distribution center, we started to walk amidst rubble of destroyed homes, and the Israeli occupation forces started firing towards us intermittently. We had to kneel down or run or [crawl] on our stomachs. We continued moving this way until we arrived in the aid center.”
Yassin added:
“When we arrived, it was 1:50 am but we were shocked when we found a plot of land with around 1,000 square kilometers surrounded with high sand barricades; it had only one long and narrow entrance with barbed wire on both sides. The Israeli occupation forces continued shooting around us. Every couple of minutes, someone fell down either dead or wounded. At 2 am, we heard a voice via loudspeakers accompanied with a green light. It told us to move forward and collect the aid.”
Yassin says: “At this time, all the shooting stopped, then total chaos erupted.”
“It was completely dark, starving people stampeded and the worst thing was that there were not more than 500 food packages while there were more than 50,000 aid seekers. Therefore, each package was sought by at least ten people. They quarreled, they pulled the package, ripped it and the aid – flour – wrapped with paper was poured on the ground or damaged. Each one took one or two cans.”
“Ten minutes later,” Yassin said, “a yellow light flashed and someone via loudspeakers warned us to leave the area very quickly, within five minutes.”
“People started to run away and after five minutes a red light also flashed and shooting from all directions began. People ran as fast as they could; a lot of them threw the aid they had in order to be able to climb over the sand barricades and flee.”
The Monitor article comments:
For Yassin, it was a futile journey. He could not get anything for his children and went back home empty handed.
The article also tells in detail how two other Gazans tried to get aid, and both said they would never go back to the GHF aid centers. The 4-year-old daughter of one said:
“I am happy that my dad is back — wounded, not dead. I prefer to remain starving rather than asking my dad to go get some aid from the Americans.”
The Monitor article quotes UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philppo Lazzarini, who has condemned the GHF’s aid distribution as a “death trap.”
“Aid distribution has become a death trap,” Lazzarini has said, pointing out to “mass casualties including scores of injured and killed among starving civilians” due to Israelis targeting them, stressing that this mechanism is “humiliating, dangerous, and exacerbates starvation.”
Insisting that aid must be safe and dignified, Lazzarini says
“This model will not address the deepening hunger. The so‑called new way of handling assistance in Gaza is most degrading, humiliating and puts lives in danger.”
------------------------------
The Middle East Monitor is a not-for-profit press monitoring organization, founded on 1 July 2009 and based in London.
Motasem Ahmed Dalloul is a Gaza-based journalist and commentator. He earned a Master’s degree in international journalism from the University of Westminster in London and is affiliated with Middle East Monitor. In May 2018, while covering the Great March of Return protests near Gaza’s border, he was shot by Israeli forces; in 2024, Dalloul lost his wife, two young sons, and other family members who were killed during Israeli airstrikes on Gaza homes.
However, he returned to reporting, determined to continue documenting hardships in Gaza. As one social media commentator says:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/25/2329957/-Israeli-American-aid-centers-in-Gaza-are-death-traps?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
