Jamal Kanj
Last March, I wrote Gaza: Genocide by Starvation, analyzing Israel’s strategy to divert attention from the starvation caused by its blockade by shifting the narrative to food distribution and internal security.
In support of this strategy, the Biden administration implemented a flawed plan, squandering more than $320 million of US taxpayers’ money on a failed floating pier, and inefficient airdropping—an illusory remedy aimed at buying Israel more time by diverting attention from the siege, while offering a hollow promise to alleviate starvation in Gaza.
According to the World Food Program, in October 2024 and due to Israeli restrictions, the UN organisation was only able to bring less than 30 per cent of what was needed in Gaza. In the north, and following 40 days of complete siege with no food and water allowed in, only after the US threatened to stop supplying Israel with weapons, three aid trucks were allowed to enter the town of Beit Hanoun. Then, as the food was unloaded for distribution, Israel opened fire at the crowd, forcing hungry families to flee the area. Additional food trucks destined for Jabalia and Beit Lahia towns were not allowed in, where children have resorted to eating weeds to survive.
Since May, Israel has granted less than 30 of the more than 300 requests for individual drivers to enter Gaza. This month alone (November), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, reported that Israel rejected 27 out of 31 planned humanitarian missions, and the four entries it allowed "were severely impeded”. As a result, bakeries and kitchens in northern Gaza had to shut down, nutrition aid suspended and no fuel to operate hospitals, water and sanitation facilities.
Whenever Israel acceded to international pressure and allowed food trucks into Gaza, it often turned the food distribution centres into death traps. One such massacre occurred on February 29, 2023, at Al Rasheed Street. The previous day, news spread that trucks carrying flour were en route to Northern Gaza. Hundreds of hungry men and women gathered at the designated drop point, the Nabulsi Roundabout.
By 4:30 the following morning, the trucks’ headlights began to flicker in the distance, their beams piercing the freezing darkness. Excitement surged through the desperate crowd. Women wept, relieved that their children would soon have food. As the trucks drew closer, their lights grew brighter, illuminating the hope and anguish etched on the faces of those who had waited so long.
The trucks passed the Israeli army checkpoint and roared into the roundabout, their rumbling engines competing with the growling stomachs of the crowd. Hungry men and women cautiously approached, desperate for food, when suddenly, deafening cracks of gunfire shattered the cold morning.
The swarming crowd was a perfect target for Israeli tanks and snipers positioned around the area. In an instant, hope turned to horror, and the flour sacks soaked in the blood of the hungry. At least 118 civilians were killed, and more than 750 were injured.
The Nabulsi Roundabout—a designated drop point coordinated between the UN and Israel—Flour Massacre was neither the first nor the last instance of Israel disrupting aid delivery and distribution. About three weeks earlier, on 5 February, Israeli naval gunboats targeted food trucks for the ninth consecutive day. In April, Israeli drones struck clearly marked vehicles belonging to the World Central Kitchen, killing seven aid workers.
In addition to Israel’s "concerted policy to destroy Gaza healthcare system”, Gaza was declared by the UN as the most dangerous place for aid workers. Year 2024 has already become the deadliest year for U.N. workers since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, with more than 320 humanitarian personnel killed since October 2023.
In parallel with the food aid massacres—the targeting of distribution centres and killing international aid workers—Israel also targeted local police protecting aid trucks. Without police security, the resulting combination of exacerbated mass starvation, hopelessness and desperation could pave the way for armed gangs to attack and loot aid convoys, triggering a total breakdown of law and order. This has always been part of an Israeli broader strategy aimed at dismantling societal and cultural community structures entirely.
As a result of targeting the aid truck’s security escorts, the police stopped providing security protection for aid convoys. Hence, Israel succeeded in impeding the delivery of food it had authorised for entry into Gaza. The Biden Administration appointed US Ambassador David Satterfield remarked that "With the departure of police escorts it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else … to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs”.
Absent of security protection, this past weekend, 23 November, Israel unexpectedly granted permission for 109 UN aid trucks to enter Gaza. According to CNN, the convoy, originally scheduled to cross into Gaza on Sunday, was, instead, instructed at short notice to depart on Saturday via an alternative route.
Immediately after crossing into Gaza, and still in a restricted area controlled and patrolled by the Israeli army, a local armed gang intercepted the convoy, opening fire on the trucks. According to a driver, Israeli tanks and drones were nearby observing the attack. In a short time, 97 of the 109 aid trucks intended for the starving population were commandeered by the armed criminals. It is important to point out that the Israeli army which shoots civilians without warning, allowed an armed gang to operate freely under their watchful eyes. When questioned about their failure to intervene and prevent the looting, the occupying Israeli army claimed that protecting aid convoys was not their responsibility.
Through it all, the Biden Administration has speciously urged Israel to "temporarily stop its military offensive on Gaza,” while simultaneously vetoing UN Security Council calls for a ceasefire. The Biden Administration has played a pivotal role in enabling Netanyahu’s engineered chaos and the unfolding genocide in Gaza, as well as in turning a blind eye to Jewish colonist mobs terrorising Palestinian villages in the West Bank, and the violent rampage in Lebanon.
(Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books.)