‘Death at any moment’: fights break out as Gazans
compete over airdropped aid
Armed gangs take food and water from desperate locals,
as critics say airdrops are dangerous and merely designed to divert public
anger
Jason Burke
in Jerusalem and Malek A Tantesh in Gaza
Sat 30 Mar
2024 12.00 GMT
Airdrops of
humanitarian aid are leading to fatal fights in Gaza as the desperate and
hungry battle to reach parachuted food and essentials, amid fears that little
of the much-needed assistance is reaching those most threatened by a looming
famine.
Eyewitness
accounts, images and interviews with aid workers in Gaza suggest the
high-profile airdrop operations are of limited help, and have contributed to
growing anarchy there.
Yousef Abu
Rabee, a strawberry farmer in northern Gaza before the conflict, said he had
given up trying to reach aid drops to provide for his family after being shot
at by unidentified armed men during a recent chaotic struggle around one
parachuted pallet of assistance.
“Since
then, I have stopped going as it is not worth all this risk, as a person is
vulnerable to injury and death at any moment,” Rabee, 25, said.
Others have
reported deaths by stabbing, as well as in stampedes. Twelve people drowned
trying to get to aid dropped by plane off a Gaza beach last week, Palestinian
health authorities have said. Earlier last month, five were killed near the
coastal refugee camp known as al-Shati, one of the most devastated parts of
Gaza, after a parachute failed to deploy properly and aid fell on a group of
waiting men, teenagers and younger children.
On 25
March, the UK parachuted more than 10 tonnes of aid, including water, rice,
cooking oil, flour, tinned goods and baby formula, to civilians along Gaza’s
northern coastline, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
Critics say
the airdrops by the UK, US, France, Spain, Jordan and other countries are
“inefficient, dangerous and expensive” and primarily aimed at diverting public
anger as international powers fail to convince Israel to allow more aid to
reach Gaza.
Aid
agencies said only about a fifth of required supplies are entering Gaza as
Israel persists with an air and ground offensive, triggered by Hamas’s 7
October attack which killed 1,200, mostly civilians, and that deliveries by air
or sea directly on to beaches are no substitute for increased supplies coming
in by land via Israel or Egypt.
Last week
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel must act immediately “to
allow … urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.
Israel
initially imposed a total blockade on Gaza after the Hamas attacks but then
allowed a small amount of strictly controlled aid into the territory.
Aid convoys
have to traverse up to 25 miles(40km) of smashed roads strewn with rubble to
reach the north, where the threat of famine is greatest. Many convoys have been
blocked or delayed by Israeli forces. Some have been looted by organised gangs
or desperate individuals.
Israel said
it puts no limit on the amount of aid entering Gaza and blames problems on UN
agencies, which it said are inefficient.
Rabee said
he had fled his home in the town of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, in the first
days of Israel’s offensive, which has so far killed 33,000, mostly women and
children, according to officials from the Hamas-run health ministry. Earlier
this month, he returned to Beit Lahia, which is now reduced to rubble.
“At one
stage, aid began to arrive by airdrop, and people began to track and watch for
this aid where it was landing near the beach. People were gathering in large
numbers in unimaginable scenes … fighting to get a single item any way they
could,” Rabee said.
When he
managed to reach an aid parcel, he was surrounded by men with guns. “Many armed
men gathered around me and started shooting to keep me and the others away from
the aid, which forced me to leave it in the end and go away without getting
anything,” Rabee told the Observer.
Jalal
Muhammad Harb Warsh Agha, a 51-year-old livestock trader, now in Rafah, said
the airdrops had “led to the outbreak of many troubles with fighting and crimes
among the citizens there, through which I lost one of my relatives”.
Nariman
Salman, 42, said that her eldest son had been stabbed to death in a fight over
assistance airdropped to northern Gaza.
“We fled to
Rafah but left my son in our home in the north. This was a terrible mistake.
When he went with his cousin to find the airdropped assistance, there was a big
fight and the two of them were attacked and someone stabbed him straight in the
heart,” Salman said.
“These
airdrops not only caused the death of my son, they also caused lot of trouble
and fighting amongst people as there isn’t enough and everyone wants to take
what they need. So someone with a gun or a knife will get the aid for himself
and leave most people helpless.”
Aid
officials in Gaza are already seeing deaths caused by acute malnutrition among
the most vulnerable – young children, the sick and the elderly. There are acute
concerns for those left without protection, such as widows or orphans.
David
Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary and chief executive of the
International Rescue Committee, said at the start of March that airdrops were a
measure of desperation.
“The simple
truth is that we wouldn’t need airdrops if the crossings were properly open,
there were more crossing points, the bureaucracy was reduced and above all that
the humanitarian case for a ceasefire was recognised. This is where all
diplomacy must be urgently focused”.
Juliette
Touma, the communications director at the UN Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said reports of fatalities underlined that the best
way to deliver aid to people in Gaza is by road and with the United Nations,
including UNRWA, which Israel recently banned from travel to northern Gaza.
“This is
the most efficient, fastest, cheapest and, most importantly, safest way to
reach people with much-needed humanitarian assistance,” Touma said.
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