Israel’s decision to ignore international tenets of humanitarian aid via the shoddy US-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation company, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), has been shown up to be nasty, inadequate and selective.
SRS lacks a résumé in humanitarian aid. Its prowess, rather, lies in the realm of military intelligence. A report from Ynet News describes its functions as “operating roadblocks, processing visual data from cameras, drones and satellites and using it to identify Hamas operatives and armed individuals”.
In practice and spirit, this seedy, cynical enterprise violates the four essential principles of humanitarian action: humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.
The four sites of distribution, located in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor south of Gaza city, have been picked for reasons of control, surveillance and forced displacement. The official reason is that doing so ensures that no aid ends up with Hamas.
“The establishment of the distribution centres,” according to the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) first official comment on the distribution points, “took place over the last few months, facilitated by the Israeli political echelon and in coordination with the US government”. The system is intended to exclude the role of experienced aid agencies, notably the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
A vicious example of this new aid delivery model was shown on May 27, with thousands of starving Palestinians descending on a distribution point in Rafah. Herded and harassed, strife broke out and the compound was stormed. Those working for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) retreated after claiming to have distributed 8000 food boxes.
Israeli troops duly opened fire. According to the Gaza Media Office, the IDF “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid”, killing 10 and wounding 62. Locations for distribution were subsequently “transformed into death traps under the occupation’s gunfire”.
While there is dispute about the figures, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that staff at its Red Cross Field Hospital did receive “a mass casualty influx of 48 patients, including women and children. All were suffering from gunshot wounds.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed this as a “loss of control momentarily” at the distribution point. An IDF official said the overall operation was a success. In keeping with standard practice, the IDF had initially denied ever firing at the desperate throng, merely letting off warning shots outside the compound.
UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini expressed alarm at “the shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food. It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.” Crucially, he said, this was “a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities”.
It is particularly galling given that UNRWA had, at one point, as many as 400 distribution centres in Gaza. Israel has made the removal and elimination of the agency’s influence a vital part of its policy, which ties in with its agenda of crushing Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, was also in no mood to accept Israel’s novel slant on providing aid. “We continue to witness a brutal humanitarian camouflage, where the red lines have led to massive atrocities.”
She said it was part of “a deliberate strategy — aimed at masking atrocities, displacing the displaced, bombing the bombarded, burning Palestinians alive and maiming survivors”.
The “language of aid” had been used to “divert international attention from legal accountability, in Israel’s attempt to dismantle the very principles upon which humanitarian law was built”.
Albanese reiterated that nothing short of a full arms embargo and the suspension of all trade with Israel would do. “The time for sanctions is now, as Israeli politicians continue to call for the extermination of babies while over 80 percent of the Israeli society, according to Israeli media, ask for the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza.”
Given GHF’s select deployment of humanitarian services, its head has resigned. Jake Wood, the now former executive director, claims that the foundation had failed to adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon”.
GHF’s middle management, despite being disappointed at the resignation, expressed readiness with the boisterous assertion that “Our trucks are loaded and ready to go”. It claims to be planning “to scale rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead.” It is humanitarian camouflage.
[Binoy Kampmark lectures at RMIT University.]