More than 170 non-governmental organisations called on Tuesday for a US and Israeli-backed food aid distribution scheme in Gaza to be dismantled over concerns it is putting civilians at risk of death and injury.
More than 500 people have been killed in mass shootings near aid distribution centres or transport routes guarded by Israeli forces since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operating in late May, according to medical authorities in Gaza.
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel says had let militants divert aid. The United Nations has called the plan 'inherently unsafe' and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules.
As of early afternoon in Geneva on Tuesday, where the joint declaration was released, 171 charities had signed on to the call for countries to press Israel to halt the GHF scheme and reinstate aid coordinated through the United Nations.
"Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families," the statement said. Groups signing it included Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Amnesty International.
In a response, the GHF said it had delivered more than 52 million meals in five weeks and said other humanitarian groups had "nearly all of their aid looted".
"Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza," the GHF said.
Doctors Without Borders told reporters in an online press briefing on Tuesday that within the last month two of its small primary health centres had received 22 dead and 548 wounded people. Those who died had received fatal wounds to the chest and in abdomen.
"They are not warning shots. They are shots directed towards the people," said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, one of MSF's emergency coordinators in Gaza.
In more than 50 per cent of the mass casualty incidents near food distribution sites, children have been shot and killed, said Rachel Cummings, Humanitarian Director for Save the Children in Gaza.
"Children have told us they want to die... to be with their mother or father who have been killed. They want to be in paradise because there is food and water," said Cummings.
The Israeli military acknowledged on Monday that Palestinian civilians have been harmed at aid distribution centres in Gaza, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions following what it called "lessons learned".
Israel has repeatedly said its forces operate near the centres in order to prevent the aid from falling into the hands of Palestinian Hamas fighters.
Meanwhile, a UN official tasked with monitoring the Israeli occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday accused Israel of using companies to pursue a "settler-colonial" displacement project aimed at apartheid and genocide.
Francesca Albanese, an Italian legal and human rights academic, said that while political leaders and governments shirked their obligations, "far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide."
Albanese, who was appointed UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories in 2022, has published a report entitled 'From economy of occupation to economy of genocide.'
Israel has long accused Albanese of lacking fairness, neutrality and impartiality. The Israeli government rejects cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council and its organs. — Reuters/dpa
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