A professor in Gaza braves bullets and bodies to reach Israeli-approved aid

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA/CAIRO (Reuters) -When university professor Nizam Salama made his way to a southern Gaza aid point last week, he came under fire twice, was crushed in a desperate crowd of hungry people and finally left empty handed.

Shooting first started shortly after he left his family's tent at 3 a.m. on June 3 to join crowds on the coast road heading towards the aid site in the city of Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new U.S.-based organization working with private military contractors to deliver aid in Gaza.

The second time bullets started to fly on Salama's journey was at Alam Roundabout close to the aid delivery site, where he saw six dead bodies.

Twenty-seven people were killed that day by Israeli fire on aid seekers, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel said its forces had shot at a group of people they viewed as a threat and the military is investigating the incident.

At the aid delivery site, known as SDS 1, queues snaked through narrow cage-like fences before gates were opened to an area surrounded by sand barriers where packages of supplies were left on tables and in boxes on the ground, according to undated CCTV video distributed by GHF, reviewed by Reuters.

Salama said the rush of thousands of people once the gates opened was a "death trap." 

"Survival is for the stronger: people who are fitter and can make it earlier and can push harder to win the package," he said. "I felt my ribs going into each other. My chest was going into itself. My breath...I couldn't breathe. People were shouting; they couldn't breathe at all."     

Reuters could not independently verify all the details of Salama's account. It matched the testimonies of two other aid seekers interviewed by Reuters, who spoke of crawling and ducking as bullets rattled overhead on their way to or from the aid distribution sites. 

All three witnesses said they saw dead bodies on their journeys to and from the Rafah sites. 

A statement from a nearby Red Cross field hospital confirmed the number of dead from the attack near the aid site on June 3.

Asked about the high number of deaths since it began operations on May 26, GHF said there had been no casualties at or in the close vicinity of its site.

The Israeli military didn't respond to detailed requests for comment. Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin told reporters on Sunday that Hamas was "doing its best" to provoke troops, who "shoot to stop the threat" in what he called a war zone in the vicinity of the aid sites. He said military investigations were underway "to see where we were wrong."  

Salama, 52, had heard enough about the new system to know it would be difficult to get aid, he said, but his five children - including two adults, two teenagers and a nine-year-old - needed food. They have been eating only lentils or pasta for months, he said, often only a single meal a day.  

"I was completely against going to the aid site of the American company (GHF) because I knew and I had heard how humiliating it is to do so, but I had no choice because of the bad need to feed my family," said the professor of education administration. 

In total, 127 Palestinians have been killed trying to get aid from GHF sites in almost daily shootings since distribution under the new system began two weeks ago, Gaza's health authority said on Monday.

The system appears to violate core principles of humanitarian aid, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a major humanitarian organisation. He compared it to the Hunger Games, the dystopian novels that set people to run and fight to the death.

"A few will be rewarded and the many will only risk their lives for nothing," Egeland said. 

"International humanitarian law has prescribed that aid in war zones should be provided by neutral intermediaries that can make sure that the most vulnerable will get the relief according to needs alone and not as part of a political or military strategy," he said.

GHF did not directly respond to a question about its neutrality, replying that it had securely delivered enough aid for more than 11 million meals in two weeks. Gaza's population is around 2.1 million people. 

FAMINE RISK

Israel allowed limited U.N.-led aid operations to resume on May 19 after an 11-week blockade in the enclave, where experts a week earlier warned a famine looms. The U.N. has described the aid allowed into Gaza as "drop in the ocean."

Separate to the U.N. operation, Israel allowed GHF to open four sites in Gaza, bypassing traditional aid groups. The GHF sites are overseen by a U.S. logistics company run by a former CIA official and part-owned by a Chicago-based private equity firm, with security provided by U.S. military veterans working for a private contractor, two sources have told Reuters.

An Israeli defence official involved in humanitarian matters told Reuters GHF's distribution centres were sufficient for around 1.2 million people.

Israel and the United States have urged the U.N. to work with GHF, which has seen a high churn of top personnel, although both countries deny funding it. Reuters has not been able to establish who provides the funding for the organisation, but reported last week that Washington was considering an Israeli request to put in $500 million.

GHF coordinates with the Israeli army for access, the foundation said in reply to Reuters questions, adding that it was looking to open more distribution points. It has paused then resumed deliveries several times after the shooting incidents, including on Monday.  

Last week, it urged the Israeli army to improve civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its operations. GHF said the U.N. was failing to deliver aid, pointing to a spate of recent lootings.

Israel says the U.N.'s aid deliveries have previously been hijacked by Hamas to feed their own militants. Hamas has denied stealing aid and the U.N. denies its aid operations help Hamas.

The U.N., which has handled previous aid deliveries into Gaza, says it has over 400 distribution points for aid in the territory. On Monday it described an increasingly anarchic situation of looting and has called on Israel to allow more of its trucks to move safely.

SHOOTING STARTS

Salama and four neighbours set out from Mawasi, in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday for the aid site, taking two hours to reach Rafah, which is several miles away near the Egyptian border.

Shooting started early in their journey. Some fire was coming from the sea, he said, consistent with other accounts of the incidents. Israel's military controls the sea around Gaza.

His small group decided to press on. In the dark, the way was uneven and he repeatedly fell, he said.

"I saw people carrying wounded persons and heading back with them towards Khan Younis," he said. 

By the time they reached Alam Roundabout in Rafah, about a kilometre from the site, there was a vast crowd. There was more shooting and he saw bullets hitting nearby.

"You must duck and stay on the ground," he said, describing casualties with wounds to the head, chest and legs. 

He saw bodies nearby, including a woman, along with "many" injured people, he said. 

Another aid seeker interviewed by Reuters, who also walked to Rafah on June 3 in the early morning, described repeated gunfire during the journey.

At one point, he and everyone around him crawled for a stretch of several hundred meters, fearing being shot. He saw a body with a wound to the head about 100 meters from the aid site, he said.

The Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah received a mass casualty influx of 184 patients on June 3, the majority of them injured by gunshots, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement, calling it the highest number of weapon-wounded patients the hospital had ever received in a single incident. There were 27 fatalities.

"All responsive patients said they were trying to reach an assistance distribution site," the statement said. 

When Salama finally arrived at the aid point on June 3, there was nothing left. 

"Everyone was standing pulling cardboard boxes from the floor that were empty," he said. "Unfortunately I found nothing: a very, very, very big zero." 

Although the aid was gone, ever more people were arriving. 

"The flood of people pushes you to the front while I was trying to go back," he said. 

As he was pushed further towards where GHF guards were located, he saw them using pepper spray on the crowd, he said.

GHF said it was not aware of the pepper spray incident but said its workers used non-lethal measures to protect civilians.

"I started shouting at the top of my lungs, brothers I don't want anything, I just want to leave, I just want to leave the place," Salama said. 

"I left empty-handed... I went back home depressed, sad and angry and hungry too," he said.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Hatem Khaled in Gaza. Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; Monica Naime in Mexico City and Tom Perry in Beirut. Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)