The scene of Palestinian civilians dying while scrambling to reach an aid convoy that was carrying food to them in Dawar Al-Nabulsy southwest of Gaza City on 29 February was a telling picture of the humanitarian crisis that has engulfed them since Israel started its military incursion into the Strip in October last year.
The casualties of the “flour massacre,” as it has come to be known, were more than 115 dead and 760 seriously injured at the hands of the Israeli military shooting at unarmed civilians. Many people died by bullets found embedded in the upper part of their bodies.
After initially lauding the act in a statement that was later withdrawn, the Israeli army said that the gunfire from its tanks was a “warning” by Israeli soldiers to prevent a mass stampede towards the aid convoy.
But footage from the Aljazeera news channel, later re-posted by the New York Times, clearly shows that the gunfire was directed straight into the crowd of people, with casualties falling dead to the ground.
The Israeli military had earlier posted doctored footage that depicted only the warning shots. After the New York Times posted the Aljazeera footage, it said it would investigate the deaths.
The injured people could not be transported because the health infrastructure in Gaza is in a shambles as a result of the Israeli military campaign, with hospitals considered fair game by the Israeli army.
Many of them have been repeatedly shelled by Israeli air strikes, with patients in their beds targeted and killed on the allegation that they are members of Hamas in contravention of all the principles of international humanitarian law.
There was an international outcry as a result of the Dar Al-Nabulsy massacre, with the US, the EU, Germany, and France, all staunch allies of Israel, issuing strong condemnations of it.
However, just three days later on 5 March similar scenes were relayed by Sky News Arabia of civilians being shot by Israeli troops in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, with witnesses saying they had been shot while trying to reach an aid convoy.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as catastrophic, and in February practically all the international aid agencies operating in Gaza announced that they could no longer operate there owing to Israel’s failure to provide the security needed for their operations.
Among the agencies is the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), one of the largest UN humanitarian agencies which was born only one year after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
It has the express purpose of rehabilitating what has been assessed as the 700,000 to one million Palestinians who were expelled from their homes and made into refugees by Israeli forces.
UNRWA has been politically ostracised by Israel, which has accused it of harbouring among its staff Hamas members who participated in the 7 October attacks on Israel.
It has also been ostracised by leading Western countries, and without waiting for an investigation into the Israeli allegations the US, Australia, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland and Italy all announced that they would stop funding the agency.
It announced that by the end of February it would have to end its presence in Gaza due to a lack of resources.
Following the Dawar Al-Nabulsy massacre, in an about-face President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU would resume its funding for UNRWA.
The US chose to deliver some 38,000 meals by air to embattled Palestinian civilians at the same time that it has been fuelling Israel’s war on Gaza with arms, tanks, and unequivocal political support.
Even so, the US has been unable to pressure its ally to open up Gaza’s existing border crossings to allow in aid. Dropping aid by air is a poor substitute for real action, as cannot be lost on any impartial observer.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF has announced that out of six children starving in the world today, one of them is a child in Gaza. This is in addition to the newborn infants who are dying of malnutrition owing to the Israeli siege of Gaza or are dying as a result of Israeli bombs and bullets striking their homes or even incubators in what is left of Gaza’s hospital wards.
The people of Gaza are currently eating animal fodder and drinking sea water because of Israel’s policy of deliberate starvation. With no sanitation and no medical care, they have begun to be ravaged by diseases such as polio, measles, and cholera among an ever-evolving list.
This has been documented in the flash reports on Gaza issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which read like a horror story.
Warnings have been given to the UN Security Council that if there is no ceasefire in Gaza, the civilian population will be decimated, not only by what the UN human rights organisation has called “carnage,” but also by the absence of any real access by humanitarian organisations to a territory that has been reduced to chaos.
Meanwhile, some 2.2 million Palestinians are embattled within a 365 square km area, hounded from one alleged safe zone to another to be met by fresh Israeli military incursions and the threat of more.
They are now entering a famine as the world continues simply to look on.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 March, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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