More than 130 Palestinian aid-seekers have been killed and 1,000 others wounded by Israeli army fire in blockaded Gaza in the last two weeks, local authorities said.
In a statement on Monday, Gaza’s government media office accused the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US aid group, of being an arm of the Israeli army.
“This organisation itself is nothing more than a propaganda front for the Israeli occupation army, led by American and Israeli officers and recruits from outside Gaza, with direct US funding and operational coordination with the Israeli army,” it said.
“GHF has been and continues to be an accomplice to an organised crime targeting civilians under the guise of aid.”
The media office said over 130 Palestinians were killed at Israeli checkpoints while trying to reach aid distribution sites.
“Nearly 1,000 other civilians have been wounded, while nine Palestinians remain missing after being lured by this Israeli-American organisation to areas militarily controlled by the occupation army. These are full-fledged crimes punishable under international law.”
The media office said the GHF lacks international standards of humanitarian work, including neutrality, non-alignment, and humanitarianism.
“Any institution that claims to be humanitarian while implementing military plans and establishing distribution points within buffer zones supervised by the (Israeli) occupation tanks can’t be considered as a relief agency but rather is part of genocidal tools and is actually complicit in the crime of genocide against the civilian population,” it added.
Israel has crafted a plan to establish four aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza, which Israeli media says aims to evacuate Palestinians from northern Gaza into the south.
According to Israel’s Army Radio, Israel’s aid distribution plan seeks to turn the territory’s north into a “completely depopulated area.”
The mechanism was opposed by the international community and the UN, which came as an alternative attempt by Israel to bypass the aid distribution through UN channels.
Since March 2, Israel has kept all border crossings shut, cutting off the entry of food, medicine, fuel, and other essential supplies for Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.
The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing nearly 55,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war crimes against civilians in the enclave.
