Israel continues to use starvation as a weapon of genocide, throwing civilians into humiliating chaos at aid distribution points

Palestinian Territory – Israeli occupation authorities bear full responsibility for the worsening humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip, having deliberately engineered and implemented a systematic starvation policy over nearly 600 days of genocide. For 88 consecutive days, all border crossings were completely shut, blocking any essential aid from entering the Strip. Today, civilians were pushed into scenes of degrading chaos at Israeli-controlled aid distribution points—revealing the US-Israeli “humanitarian assistance” mechanism as a tool of humiliation, subjugation, and destruction.

Euro-Med Monitor’s field team tracked the aid distribution mechanism, supervised by an American company established by both the US and Israel, and documented the apparatus as consistent with other failed systems Israel has implemented during the ongoing genocide to supposedly allow Palestinians access to food. The operation, guarded jointly by Israeli forces and private US security personnel, lacked the minimum humanitarian standards. Thousands of starving civilians were forced to walk for dozens of kilometres to reach a militarised zone surrounded by the Israeli army, only to be herded through fenced corridors under tight surveillance to receive limited food parcels, without any clear system or dignity-respecting protocol in place.

Israeli forces deliberately degraded civilians by confining them behind barbed wire, while the US managing company failed to provide even the most basic conditions to safely accommodate 10s of thousands of people desperate for aid after over two months of total blockade. Many were compelled to walk long distances to reach a single aid point, where they were forced into humiliatingly narrow, fenced pathways—only to receive a meagre food parcel before exiting through another highly restrictive route—an ordeal wholly devoid of human dignity or humanitarian sensibility.

Thousands of Palestinians arrived at the disorganised site and found total chaos there. The US company and its guarding forces failed to control the situation, prompting intervention from Israeli troops. The mayhem resulted in an Israeli helicopter opening fire near the crowds and causing injuries, some due to stampedes.

Euro-Med Monitor field teams documented extreme disorder and complete operational collapse, with no fair or dignified aid distribution system in place. Civilians were held in groups within fenced corridors under intense security monitoring, amid overcrowding and appalling conditions. The site lacked essential infrastructure and followed no clear aid distribution criteria, worsening people’s suffering and constituting a collective humiliation that appeared to be entirely deliberate.

Israeli authorities deliberately obstructed the work of experienced international humanitarian organisations, and instead delegated aid distribution to the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” a US-based entity established in February 2025 with direct support from Israel and the US. It is operated by private US security firms—an arrangement rejected by the United Nations and international relief organisations as it undermines humanitarian principles and turns aid into a political and military tool, exposing civilians to forced displacement and invasive surveillance.

Today’s events reflect the international community’s abject failure to manage the Israeli-made humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, and embody Israel’s ongoing policy of using hunger as a weapon of genocide against civilians. These starvation tactics are designed to collectively degrade and completely subjugate the Palestinian people.

The new US-Israeli mechanism for delivering and distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip constitutes a clear violation of international law. At its core, it is a humanitarian front designed to barely manage, as well as conceal, the crime of starvation. This is a blatant attempt to mislead a global public that is finally awakening to the catastrophic humanitarian reality in the enclave. Meanwhile, Israel continues to destroy Palestinian lives and forcibly displace the population from vast areas of the Strip, further entrenching Israeli military control.

What occurred today reaffirms previous warnings by Euro-Med Monitor: the US-Israeli mechanism is clearly intended as a tool of coercive control over the Gaza Strip’s civilian population. It provides a single aid parcel per family per week, under immensely restrictive security conditions, in flagrant violation of the humanitarian principles of non-discrimination, adequacy, and continuity. The new mechanism fails to meet any criteria for neutral and effective aid. Instead, it is being used as a means to subjugate Palestinian society by systematically controlling civilians’ most basic survival needs.

The food parcels distributed under this mechanism fail to meet even the minimum nutritional requirements. They contain limited, imbalanced items lacking essential nutrients, and exclude vital supplies for children such as milk or therapeutic food. These parcels are closer to propaganda tools than genuine humanitarian assistance. Their design makes clear there is no real intention to ensure food security—rather, they aim to entrench hunger and deprivation by keeping people alive at subsistence levels, while denying people the means to recover or survive.

This mechanism is designed to force the residents of the northern Gaza and Gaza governorates—home to nearly half the Strip’s population—into forced displacement, toward the enclave’s central and southern areas, where the distribution points are concentrated. It subjects all heads of households to intrusive security screenings, putting them at risk of enforced disappearance or arbitrary detention, particularly as Israeli military forces are stationed near these distribution points and along access roads.

Such a limited and highly restricted distribution system cannot be considered a humanitarian response. It is a deliberate policy aimed at perpetuating hunger instead of addressing it—maintaining a minimal flow of food to keep the population in a constant state of need, and exploiting that need as a tool of pressure and control to forcibly displace people.

The Israeli government, which uses starvation as a central tactic in its genocide in the Gaza Strip with the goal of eliminating Palestinians as a people, cannot in any way be party to any humanitarian operation. Involving Israel in the organisation or supervision of aid delivery inevitably turns humanitarian assistance into an instrument of population control used to impose forced “choices” on civilians, and lays the groundwork for further ethnic cleansing in the context of a colonial project aimed at erasing Palestinian existence and annexing their land.

The refusal of UN agencies and independent international relief organisations to cooperate with the US-Israeli mechanism, due to its lack of basic humanitarian standards, must serve as a clear warning and a serious call to action for all states. There is an urgent need to escalate pressure on Israel to ensure the immediate and unconditional flow of aid into the Gaza Strip, and to reject any mechanisms used as instruments of additional repression or displacement. The priority must be to end the genocide that has been ongoing since October 2023.

All states must act immediately to restore full humanitarian access and lift Israel’s unlawful blockade of the Gaza Strip, as this is the only viable route to halting the escalating humanitarian collapse. This includes ensuring the entry of aid and goods to avert imminent famine, and establishing UN-supervised humanitarian corridors to guarantee the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Strip, alongside the deployment of independent international observers to verify US-Israeli compliance.

The international community must impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its more powerful allies, particularly the United States, for their horrific violations of international law. This should include a comprehensive ban on arms exports, spare parts, dual-use technologies, and related purchases; an immediate halt to all forms of political, financial, military, intelligence, and security cooperation; the freezing of financial assets belonging to political and military officials implicated in crimes against Palestinians; travel bans; the suspension of Israeli and US military and security companies from global markets; and the freezing of their international bank assets. Moreover, trade and customs privileges and bilateral agreements that economically empower Israel and the US must be suspended, as they enable the continuation of atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe