The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the US and Israel to oversee the distribution of aid in Gaza, has announced it is ending its controversial \u201cmission\u201d and is closing aid distribution sites following a US-brokered ceasefire agreement.<\/p>\n
Under increasing international pressure to allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip earlier this year, Israel and the US backed the GHF as an independent agency to administer aid. Israel completely blocked aid to the Strip from March this year, claiming that Hamas was stealing aid provided by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Israel did not provide any evidence for this and also blocked UNRWA workers from entering the Strip from February.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n While the UNRWA network operated about 400 sites across the Strip before that, the GHF, guarded by armed US private security contractors, set up only four \u201cmega-sites\u201d \u2013 three in southern Gaza and one near Gaza City \u2013 to distribute food and other aid to Gaza\u2019s population of about two million Palestinians.<\/p>\n Furthermore, since the organisation began operations in Gaza in May, Israeli forces and some US contractors have routinely opened fire on Palestinians arriving to receive aid. Disorganisation around the sites has caused large crowds to gather, and some people have suffocated or died in stampedes.<\/p>\n While GHF Executive Director John Acree said in a statement on Monday that the organisation delivered the \u201conly aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza\u201d, more than 2,000 aid seekers have been crushed to death or killed by gunfire, according to UN figures.<\/p>\n Here is how the GHF \u201cmission\u201d to Gaza unfolded this year:<\/p>\n May 26 \u2013<\/strong> GHF issues a statement announcing it will begin direct aid delivery inside the battered enclave, hours after its executive director, Jake Wood, resigned, citing concerns about the agency\u2019s independence. The UN and other aid agencies refuse to work with GHF, warning that requiring Palestinians to gather at a few centralised aid points would put people at risk and undermine other aid efforts.<\/p>\n May 27<\/strong> \u2013 GHF begins operating in Gaza. Israeli forces open fire on thousands of Palestinians attempting to receive food in southern Gaza\u2019s Rafah area, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens. Aid seekers are forced to clamber over fences and push through packed crowds to reach life-saving supplies. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric says seeing thousands of Palestinians storming the aid site is \u201cheartbreaking\u201d\u00a0as the chaos underscores the staggering level of hunger gripping Gaza. Gaza\u2019s Government Media Office calls the incident a \u201cdeliberate massacre and a full-fledged war crime.\u201d<\/p>\n May 29<\/strong> \u2013 Israeli forces open fire at an aid point in southern Gaza, killing 10 people and injuring dozens. Shortly after, multiple explosions are reported near another aid centre on the Netzarim Corridor, which divides northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip. It is not clear what caused the blasts, and there are no reports of casualties.<\/p>\n May 30<\/strong> \u2013 Israeli forces open fire on civilians waiting to collect food at a GHF distribution point on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza, wounding at least 20 people.<\/p>\n June 1<\/strong> \u2013 Israeli tanks kill at least 32 Palestinians waiting to get food at two aid distribution sites in Gaza, leaving more than 200 others injured.<\/p>\n June 3<\/strong> \u2013 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the killing and injuring of Palestinian aid seekers is \u201cunacceptable\u201d and calls for an independent investigation after Israeli forces open fire close to an aid distribution site in Rafah. Gaza\u2019s Health Ministry says at least 27 Palestinians have been killed in the incident and 90 injured.<\/p>\n June 8<\/strong> \u2013 At least 13 Palestinians are killed, and more than 150 are injured when Israeli troops and US security contractors open fire on crowds waiting for food near two aid distribution sites in Gaza, one east of Rafah and another near the Wadi Gaza Bridge. Gaza\u2019s Government Media Office accuses Israel of turning distribution sites into \u201chuman slaughterhouses\u201d.<\/p>\n July 16<\/strong> \u2013 At least 21 Palestinians are killed at a GHF aid distribution centre in southern Gaza. Witness accounts say Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd, causing a stampede. At least 15 people died of suffocation, while others were shot. Twenty-four-year-old Mohammed Abedin, who survived the incident, told Al Jazeera that they were \u201cshot at like animals\u201d.<\/p>\n July 22<\/strong> \u2013 The United Nations says the number of Palestinians killed while trying to access food in Gaza from GHF distribution points has topped 1,000.<\/p>\n August 1<\/strong> \u2013 A former contractor for GHF, Anthony Aguilar, tells Al Jazeera about what he describes as the deadly and unprofessional practices he witnessed firsthand at aid distribution sites in Gaza. This includes firing what the organisation described as \u201cwarning shots\u201d on an unarmed population using heavy artillery. \u201cThey call that warning shots, I call it a war crime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n August 2<\/strong> \u2013 At least 38 Palestinians seeking aid at distribution sites operated by GHF are killed, despite Israel announcing on July 27 it would begin implementing \u201ctactical pauses\u201d in fighting in some areas to allow Palestinians greater access to humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n August 5<\/strong> \u2013 Twenty-eight UN experts call for GHF\u2019s dismantlement, describing it as an \u201cutterly disturbing example\u201d of aid exploitation for military purposes.<\/p>\n August 9<\/strong> \u2013 Israel allows some aid to be airdropped into Gaza by several countries, including Germany, Belgium and Jordan, amid global outrage, but a 15-year-old Palestinian boy is crushed to death by a falling pallet during an airdrop near the so-called Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.<\/p>\n September 4<\/strong> \u2013 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says it has recorded more than 2,146 deaths in the vicinity of sites run by GHF and along aid convoy routes.<\/p>\n October 12<\/strong> \u2013 GHF confirms it has suspended operations following the announcement of a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which came into effect on October 10.<\/p>\n November 10<\/strong> \u2013 A documentary, Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel\u2019s War, is aired on UK network ITV. It features testimony from Israeli soldiers deployed to Gaza, with some describing how GHF guards would \u201copen fire, even if they don\u2019t see a concrete threat\u201d.<\/p>\n November 24<\/strong> \u2013 GHF announces it is ending its \u201cmission\u201d in Gaza following the ceasefire. It claims to have distributed more than 3 million food boxes, equivalent to 187 million meals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the US and Israel to oversee the distribution of aid in Gaza, has announced it is ending its controversial \u201cmission\u201d and is closing aid distribution sites following a US-brokered ceasefire agreement. Under increasing international pressure to allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip earlier this year, Israel and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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