It is another terrible slaughter in a long list in these five months of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. And it combines disheartening elements of the current reality of the strip: a multitude of Palestinian civilians, threatened by hunger caused by the siege of the Jewish State, throw themselves in despair on aid trucks that enter with droppers, especially in the north. The mission leads to hits and, in the end, shooting by Israeli soldiers against unarmed civilians.
According to the local health authorities, 112 dead and more than 750 wounded is the balance of a bloody dawn on Al-Raixid street, in the southeast of Gaza City, where the wait for some flour and canned goods is turned into a trap. “We don’t want aid like this. We don’t want help and bullets together”, lamented a man next to a pile of wounded.
Amid changing versions, Israeli military sources acknowledged that the soldiers fired at the people because they felt “threatened” by the approach of some people. However, officially, the Israeli army divided the events into two parts. On the one hand, he spoke of a stampede of thousands of Palestinians on the trucks, with dozens of dead and injured “due to the pushing, trampling and running over” of the vehicles. On the other hand, he admitted that the soldiers fired at a small group that approached the tanks and wounded about a dozen people.
What a spokesman for the Israeli Government calls “a tragedy”, according to the spokesman for the Gazan Ministry of Health, it is “a new crime and massacre” committed deliberately. Paramedics, doctors and witnesses refute the Israeli version and allege that soldiers opened fire when people rushed the convoys.
“The aid trucks got too close to some tanks that were in the area and thousands of people simply stormed them. The soldiers fired at the crowd because the people got too close to the tanks,” a witness who asked to remain anonymous told the AFP agency.
Kamel Abu Nahel, speaking to the Associated Press while being treated for a gunshot wound at Al-Xifa hospital, recorded two bursts of gunfire from the soldiers every time people tried to get flour and food. He suffered an impact on one leg and the other was run over by one of the vehicles.
Given the large number of wounded and the destruction of the roads, the ambulances did not provide the scope to evacuate the civilians, so many were transported in vans, in carts pulled by donkeys or simply in their arms. Hospitals, damaged by Israeli incursions and short of supplies and fuel, were overwhelmed by the flow of patients.
As images and details became known, reactions began to accumulate, mostly condemnation. “Slaughter” was the term that united the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, accompanied by the adjectives “horrible” and “atrocious”, respectively. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia joined the repudiation, the United States described it as a “serious incident”, lamented “the loss of innocent lives” and assumed “the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza, where innocent Palestinians they are just trying to feed their families”.
On social media, Palestinian users and media dubbed the attack “the slaughter of the flour bags”, and some Israelis also joined in the criticism. “How can you contemplate such a horrific event in which at least dozens of starving people die who were queuing for bread and water and explain that they are guilty of their own death? 30,000 dead weigh on us. Mass hunger is upon us,” wrote Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the NGO Standing Together, which last night organized a protest in Tel-Aviv to demand a ceasefire. Several demonstrators brought packages of flour.
The slaughter has highlighted the hunger of the 700,000 civilians who remain in northern Gaza, further isolated by the Israeli invasion. The Ministry of Health of the strip reported the death of ten children from malnutrition and dehydration between Tuesday and yesterday, Thursday, and at the same time the number of organizations that accuse Israel of using hunger and thirst as weapons is growing of war
Pressure is also on the rise on Israel and the delivery of humanitarian aid, which is even lower than at the start of the invasion due to blockades by extremist Israeli protesters at border crossings, slow inspections Israelis and access and security restrictions. After the World Food Program suspended distributions for lack of guarantees ten days ago, the Israeli authorities took over the direct delivery of aid to northern Gaza, carrying out transfers at night to avoid “looting”, a measure that is now has questioned.
