Humanitarian Camouflage: The Debut of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

What a nasty thing it has turned out to be.  It involved subversion – Israel’s desire to ignore international tenets of humanitarian aid in favour of expediency and security – and the naked show of violent desperation.  Via the shoddy US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation company, distribution of necessaries in the Gaza Strip through the organisation’s delivery arm, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), has been inadequate and selective. 

SRS is a disreputable outfit, one lacking a résumé in humanitarian aid.  Its prowess, rather, lies in the realm of military intelligence.  A report from Ynet News describes its functions as “operating roadblocks, processing visual data from cameras, drones and satellites and using it to identify Hamas operatives and armed individuals.”  In both practice and spirit, this seedy, cynical enterprise violates the four essential principles of humanitarian action: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

The four sites of distribution, located in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor south of Gaza City, have been picked for reasons of control, surveillance and forced displacement.  The official reason is that doing so ensures that no aid ends up in the eager hands of Hamas.  “The establishment of the distribution centres,” went the first official comment on the distribution points by the IDF, “took place over the last few months, facilitated by the Israeli political echelon and in coordination with the US government.”  Saliently and devastatingly, the system is intended to exclude the role of experienced aid agencies, notably that of the long abominated United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

A vicious example of this new model of aid delivery was given on May 27, with thousands of starving Palestinians descending on a distribution point in Rafah.  Herded and harassed, strife duly broke out.  The compound was stormed.  Those working for GHF retreated after claiming to have distributed 8,000 food boxes.

Israeli troops duly opened fire.  According to the enclave’s Government Media Office, the IDF “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid”, leaving 10 dead and 62 wounded.  Locations for distribution were subsequently “transformed into death traps under the occupation’s gunfire”.  While there is some dispute about the figures, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that staff at its Red Cross Field Hospital did receive “a mass casualty influx of 48 patients, including women and children.  All were suffering from gunshot wounds.”

This bloody lapse was dismissed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a minor blemish – there had been a “loss of control momentarily” at the distribution point.  An IDF official, however, preferred to see the overall operation as a success.  In keeping with standard practice, the IDF had initially denied ever firing at the desperate throng, merely letting off warning shots outside the compound.

In remarks to reporters at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo, the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, expressed alarm at “the shocking images of hungry people pushing against fences, desperate for food.  It was chaotic, undignified and unsafe.”  Crucially, this was “a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities”.  The whole affair was particularly galling given the pre-existing networks of humanitarian aid that UNRWA has mastered over the years.  The agency, at one point, had as many as 400 distribution centres in Gaza.  But Israel has made the removal and elimination of the agency’s influence a vital part of its policy, one that ties in with the agenda of crushing aspirations for Palestinian statehood.

Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, was also in no mood to accept Israel’s novel slant on providing aid.  “We continue to witness a brutal humanitarian camouflage, where the red lines have led to massive atrocities.”  This was part of “a deliberate strategy – aimed at masking atrocities, displacing the displaced, bombing the bombarded, burning Palestinians alive and maiming survivors.”  The “language of aid” had been used to “divert international attention from legal accountability, in Israel’s attempt to dismantle the very principles upon which humanitarian law was built.”

The latest turn of events also prompted the rapporteur to reiterate her view that nothing short of a full arms embargo and the suspension of all trade with Israel would do.  “The time for sanctions is now, as Israeli politicians continue to call for the extermination of babies while over 80 percent of the Israeli society, according to Israeli media, ask for the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza.” 

The disgraceful deployment of select humanitarian services by GHF has already seen its head resign.  In a statement, the now former executive director, Jake Wood, claimed that the Foundation had failed to adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”  Middle management wonks at the GHF, despite being disappointed at the resignation, expressed readiness with the boisterous assertion that “Our trucks are loaded and ready to go”. The body planned “to scale rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead.”  Much more humanitarian camouflage is in the offing.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University.  Email: [email protected]