Gaza: Israeli soldiers admit to deliberately killing unarmed aid seekers
Israeli troops have admitted to deliberately shooting and killing unarmed Palestinians waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip, following direct orders from their superiors.
According to soldiers and officers who spoke to Haaretz, commanders instructed them to open fire on people seeking food at aid distribution points despite knowing they posed no threat.
One soldier described the distribution centres as a "killing field".
"Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day," the soldier told Haaretz.
"They're treated like a hostile force, no crowd-control measures, no tear gas. Just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars."
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Israel blocked all aid and goods from entering the Gaza Strip for nearly three months beginning in March, pushing the two million residents of the besieged enclave into a severe hunger crisis.
In late May, the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF), a recently launched and controversial aid group, began distributing limited food parcels at four locations.
These centres generally operate for just one hour each morning, according to Haaretz.
'Our form of communication is gunfire'
- Israeli soldier
Officers and soldiers told Haaretz they fired on people who arrived before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, and again after the centres closed to "disperse" the crowds.
"Once the centre opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach," one soldier said.
"Our form of communication is gunfire."
The soldier also said they opened fire "early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range", even though there was "no danger to the forces."
"I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons," one soldier said.
In the area where he served, the operation was reportedly referred to as Operation Salted Fish, named after an Israeli children's game.
Israeli forces have killed at least 550 Palestinians waiting to receive aid and wounded over 4,000 more.
Haaretz reported that the Military Advocate General unit had instructed the army's General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism - a body tasked with reviewing incidents that may constitute violations of the laws of war - to investigate suspected war crimes at the aid sites.
Starvation as weapon of war
The Israeli military has been repeatedly accused by UN experts of using starvation as a weapon of war.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), the number of malnourished children is increasing "at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children between the ages of six months and five years old admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition in just the month of May.
A group of 15 human rights and legal organisations has called for the suspension of aid operations by the GHF, warning that the initiative may be complicit in international crimes.
The organisations criticised the GHF for a lack of "transparency, impartiality, and accountability", citing concerns over its opaque structure and the absence of publicly available operational plans.
According to their letter, the new relief delivery method, which has sought to wrest distribution away from major aid groups led by the United Nations, is a "radical and dangerous shift away from established international humanitarian relief operations".
It added that the "privatized, militarized aid distribution" is "dehumanizing, repeatedly deadly and contributes to the forced displacement of the very population it purports to help", referencing the ongoing killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces near GHF aid points.
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