Thousands of hungry Palestinians flooded a controversial new aid distribution center in Gaza on Tuesday and made off with boxes of food while Israeli soldiers fired live rounds in the air to disperse the crowds.
It was a violent debut for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) facility near the city of Rafah, the first of four food distribution sites set up by the U.S.-backed organization and the Israeli military to control the flow of humanitarian aid into the crowded Palestinian territory.
The Hamas-run government in Gaza accuses the GHF of being "affiliated with the Israeli occupation administration itself."
Desperate for food after a three-month blockade of Gaza by the Israelis reduced aid shipments to a trickle, on Tuesday the throng could be seen in live video storming the barricades and removing boxes of aid while GHF workers looked on.
The GHF confirmed in a statement that the Gazans took some of the aid from the site they refer to as SDS-1.
"The needs on the ground are great," the statement said. "At one moment in the late afternoon, the volume of people at the SDS was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate. This was done in accordance with GHF protocol to avoid casualties."
Order was restored by late afternoon, the group said, adding it had distributed about 8,000 food boxes, equivalent to about 462,000 meals, to a crowd of Palestinians who included many women and children, some of whom arrived on donkey carts.
Later, the aid organization and the Israelis, as well as the U.S. State Department, accused Hamas of trying to block civilians from reaching the aid distribution center.
"The fact of the matter is, Hamas has been opposed to this dynamic," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at a briefing. "They have attempted to stop the aid movement through Gaza to these distribution centers. They have failed, but they certainly try."
The Hamas-run Government Media Office in Gaza blamed the situation on "mismanagement" by the GHF.
"This resulted in thousands of hungry people rushing out under the pressure of the siege and hunger, then storming the distribution centers and seizing food, interspersed with gunfire from the Israeli occupation," the media office said.
After Israel lifted a more than two-month blockade barring the entry of food, medicine and other vital supplies into Gaza this month, the GHF, which was founded this year, has been tasked with distributing in aid in Gaza, with the backing of Israeli officials and the Trump administration.
Israel has maintained that a new system was needed, alleging that Hamas was stealing aid. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and other humanitarian groups have denied seeing evidence of humanitarian supplies being diverted to Hamas or other militant groups.
Speaking at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Wednesday, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said he was “glad” to see GHF’s operations get underway, adding the process appeared to be “effective so far.”
He repeated Israel's claims that Hamas was stealing aid.
Meanwhile, critics at the U.N. and other relief organizations say Israelis are using aid to lure Palestinians from their homes in northern Gaza to the south so they can solidify their control over the territory.
"The so-called 'safe distribution sites' are nothing more than 'racist isolation ghettos' established under the supervision of the occupation, in exposed and isolated military areas," according to the Hamas-run media office.
Before Tuesday's incident, legal advocacy groups like Switzerland-based TRIAL International had denounced GHF and pointed to the difficulties in distributing aid, given questions over its impartiality and independence.
“If your organization is being used by the occupying powers, it is likely that you won’t be able to carry out your task in respect to those principles,” Philip Grant, TRIAL International’s executive director, told NBC News on Monday.
“The fact that the GHF will continue its work is highly problematic if it’s done in a way that is not consistent with international principles of the Geneva Conventions,” he added.
On Monday, the GHF's chief, Jake Wood, gave critics of his organization's efforts more ammunition by suddenly resigning and claiming that it would be impossible to do the job without compromising "humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence."
COGAT, the Israeli military’s liaison with Palestinians and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, was mum on Wood's exit.
GHF’s board said in a statement that it was “disappointed” by Wood’s departure but would push forward with its plan and begin distributing aid in Gaza.
In Washington, Bruce that said the State Department was not involved in the effort and that "the real story here is that there’s food aid going in."
"There will be people, of course, who will look at some of the details and not like it," Bruce said.
