{"id":282419,"date":"2025-07-22T11:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T11:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/282419\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T11:57:10","slug":"eleven-minute-race-for-food-how-aid-points-in-gaza-became-death-traps-a-visual-story-global-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/282419\/","title":{"rendered":"Eleven-minute race for food: how aid points in Gaza became \u2018death traps\u2019 \u2013 a visual story | Global development"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raed Jamal sends the message shortly after he returns, empty-handed, from an aid distribution point to his tent in the al-Mawasi displacement camp in south-west Gaza<\/a>. \u201cThe tanks came and started firing. Three boys near me were martyred,\u201d says the 36-year-old, who has four children. \u201cI didn\u2019t even get anything, just two empty boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jamal\u2019s journey involved a long walk to and from a former residential neighbourhood bulldozed by Israeli forces and turned into one of four militarised aid distribution centres run by the Gaza<\/a> Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is based in Delaware in the US.<\/p>\n

Video sent by Raed Jamal<\/a>An extract from a video sent by Raed Jamal.<\/p>\n

The GHF sites \u2013 Tal al-Sultan, Saudi neighbourhood, Khan Younis and Wadi Gaza \u2013 are located in evacuation zones, which means civilians seeking food have to enter areas they have been ordered to leave. According to GHF\u2019s Facebook page, the sites remain open for as little as eight minutes at a time, and in June the average for the Saudi site was 11 minutes. These factors have led to accusations from NGOs that the system is dangerous by design. The Unrwa chief, Philippe Lazzarini, has said<\/a> \u201cthe so-called mechanism \u2026 is a death trap costing more lives than it saves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The system favours the strongest, so it is mostly men who travel along the designated routes. Then they wait \u2013 often for hours \u2013 for a centre to open. Finally, there is a dash into the centre of the zones and a scramble to grab a box.<\/p>\n

Satellite image showing the journey made by Raed Jamal<\/a><\/p>\n

At every stage, those seeking aid pass Israeli tanks and troops, as quadcopters fly above. In another clip shared by Jamal he ducks as bullets pass overhead.<\/p>\n

Video sent by Raed Jamal<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have purged our hearts of fear,\u201d Jamal says of his near daily walks to the site. \u201cI need to bring food for my children so they don\u2019t die of hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new system, and near daily deaths<\/p>\n

GHF, a startup organisation with no experience of distributing food in complex conflict zones, employs US mercenaries at the sites, which opened in May. They replaced 400 non-militarised aid points run under a UN system that Israel claimed had to be shut down because Hamas was diverting aid from it. No evidence for this has been provided.<\/p>\n

Map showing the location of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites in Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n

Since May, more than 1,000 people have died while seeking food<\/a> from the centres and other humanitarian convoys, according to the UN. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Chart showing the number of deaths and injuries while seeking aid in Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n

The sites\u2019 opening times are usually announced in posts on a Facebook account<\/a> and, more recently, messages sent through a Telegram channel. A WhatsApp channel was also set up in the first weeks. People have been warned not to approach the centres until they open.<\/p>\n

As the chart below shows, for the site Jamal visited, the amount of time between the site\u2019s opening time being announced and the opening itself decreased dramatically in June.<\/p>\n

Chart showing the timings of posts made on the GFH Facebook page for the Saudi centre<\/a><\/p>\n

Mahmoud Alareer, a 27-year-old living in a tent in western Gaza City, says the opening time announcements for the aid site he uses \u2013 Wadi Gaza \u2013 have become useless, because of the distance from where he is living. Instead, he travels to the edges of the site in the middle of the night and gambles on it opening at 2am, as it has on every visit so far.<\/p>\n

Satellite image showing Mahmoud Alareer\u2019s journey<\/a><\/p>\n

First he climbs on to the back of a truck for the long ride south from Gaza City through the militarised Netzarim corridor. Then he waits in the dark until Israeli forces allow him to enter. \u201cYou get there and you slowly, slowly advance,\u201d he says. \u201cYou always know that it could be you who gets shot, or it might be someone next to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alareer says chaos always ensues when the aid point opens, as people start running towards the packages, which are left in the middle of the distribution zone. People trip over craters and tangled wires.<\/p>\n

Palestinians carry parcels at night as they walk back from a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point in central Gaza. Photograph: Eyad Baba\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

GHF has faced severe criticism from the humanitarian community due to the dangers posed to Palestinians both at the sites and on the roads around them. In early July, more than 170 NGOs called for GHF to be shut down<\/a>, accusing it of violating the principles of humanitarian aid, and calling for the resumption of non-militarised aid in Gaza.<\/p>\n

M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res\u2019 (MSF) emergency coordinator in Gaza, Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, says night-time distributions are particularly dangerous because so many roads in southern Gaza have been made unrecognisable by Israeli bombing, making it hard for Palestinians to stick to routes designated by GHF.<\/p>\n

Zabalgogeazkoa is scathing about the GHF system. \u201cThis is not humanitarian aid,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can only think that it was designed to cause damage to the people seeking aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

GHF and the IDF have been approached for comment.<\/p>\n

GHF has previously said the UN figures for deaths around distribution sites are \u201cfalse and misleading\u201d. It has also defended its operations more generally and accused its critics of engaging in a \u201cturf war\u201d over humanitarian supplies. It says it bears no responsibility for deaths outside the perimeters of its sites.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military has previously acknowledged firing warning shots<\/a> at Palestinians who it says have approached its forces in a suspicious manner. It has also disputed some of the death tolls provided by the Palestinian authorities.<\/p>\n

Palestinians\u2019 unmet aid needs<\/p>\n

GHF runs only four sites to feed 2 million people, in a territory where extreme hunger is widespread and food security experts have warned of looming famine<\/a>. According to figures released by Gaza\u2019s health ministry 33 people have died due to starvation and malnutrition since Sunday.<\/p>\n

It says it has delivered more than 85 million meals \u201cvia roughly 1,422,712 boxes<\/a>\u201d since its operations began. According to these figures, each box would provide a family with about 60 meals. The organisation has posted photos of GHF-marked boxes that have items such as flour, potatoes, beans and oil. However, Palestinians in Gaza have shared pictures showing open boxes at GHF sites containing a smaller range of items.<\/p>\n

Left: an IDF handout showing the contents of a GHF food parcel. Right: the contents of a GHF parcel posted on TikTok by someone in Gaza. Composite: IDF, TikTok user @mohamed.nedal98<\/p>\n

Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, says she could not comment on the specific logistics of GHF, but that aid should go beyond food and should include water, cooking gas or other cooking facilities. \u201cIf you look at Gaza now \u2026 people have been deprived of everything that sustains life: shelter materials, fuel, cooking gas, hygiene materials, everything that one needs to feel dignified, to have some sort of semblance of normality,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

According to the World Food Programme<\/a> (WFP), nearly a third of Gaza\u2019s population is going several days without food, and 470,000 people are expected to face the most severe levels of hunger between May and September this year.<\/p>\n

Chart showing the percentage of population in levels of food insecurity in Gaza from 2023 to 2025.<\/a><\/p>\n

The WFP has also warned that dietary diversity declined sharply in May and continued to worsen in June.<\/p>\n

Chart showing how many days a week people in Gaza eat of each food group, in the pre-conflict times. and in 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

Damage to farmland over the course of the war has only increased Palestinians\u2019 reliance on aid. A study published this year using satellite imagery to assess damage to farmland found up to 70% of tree crops had been damaged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Map showing damaged tree crops in Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n

A Unosat assessment from April found that 71.2% of Gaza\u2019s greenhouses had been damaged<\/a>. This sequence shows damage to greenhouses and orchards in Beit Lahiya.<\/p>\n

Before\/after<\/a><\/p>\n

In late March, dozens of bakeries supported by the WFP halted production due to the Israeli blockade. A handful briefly resumed bread production in May when some trucks were allowed into the territory, as this timeline shows.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Jamal reiterates that he has no choice but to return to his nearest GHF site, despite the dangers. \u201cI have gone four days in a row and not brought anything back, not even flour \u2013 nothing,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes you just can\u2019t beat the others. But what else can we do, our life is a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raed Jamal sends the message shortly after he returns, empty-handed, from an aid distribution point to his tent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-282419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}