For World Central Kitchen, which lost seven people to an Israeli drone in Gaza, food is a human right

World Central Kitchen (WCK) had just completed its most important achievement in Gaza: the makeshift jetty that allowed food aid to be sent by sea and thus bypassed the blocked Rafah border crossing. The emergency workers had built the scaffolding themselves with the rubble of bombed-out houses. It was a project with “a bizarre number of obstacles,” Sam Bloch, the organization’s emergency response director, said in March The New York Times. But it had worked.

On Saturday, a second cargo ship arrived in Gaza from Cyprus with 332 tons of food. But 220 tons of this is now sailing back, the spokesman for Cypriot minister Theodoros Gotsis said on Monday. Because the most important local partner for loading and unloading the cargo, World Central Kitchen, is leaving Gaza for the time being.

Seven World Central Kitchen employees – a Gazan, a Pole, an Australian, three British and a Canadian-American – were killed on Monday when their convoy was shot at by an Israeli army drone. The three cars in which the emergency workers drove were clearly recognizable from the air and the journey had been coordinated in advance with the Israeli army, WCK said. The organization therefore assumes ‘direct action’ against aid workers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied this on Tuesday and said he would launch an investigation into the airstrike.

Since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 196 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, according to United Nations figures. But this is, as far as we know, the first time that there have been Western casualties.

US President Joe Biden reacted remarkably strongly to his ally’s action on Wednesday. Israel is said to be doing too little to protect aid workers in Gaza. “This is a major reason why delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza is so difficult.”

American chef

The relatively young aid organization World Central Kitchen has done important work in Gaza in recent months. The man behind the organization is the Spanish-American José Andrés: a chef, TV personality, owner of several restaurants in the US and philanthropist. He founded the organization in 2010 after cooking with the local community in Haiti, where an earthquake had just occurred.

World Central Kitchen initially focused mainly on long-term projects. But in 2017, the focus shifted to disaster relief and political conflict after the organization distributed food in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in the US state of Houston. Their mission became: not to dawdle and wait until everything is perfectly arranged, but to bring food and water to a disaster area as quickly as possible. In addition to the Gaza Strip, WCK is currently helping in Ukraine, Haiti, Israel, Egypt and Lebanon.

In Gaza, where WCK has been one of the few active aid organizations since October, it has so far distributed 43 million meals. In addition, the organization set up 68 ‘community soup kitchens’ run by Gazans themselves. This not only ensures that food distribution is faster and more efficient, according to the organization, but ‘it also contributes to a sense of personal responsibility and self-reliance among Palestinians’.

More small organizations gone

It is still difficult to predict what WCK’s withdrawal means for the Gazans. The drone attack seems to mainly deter smaller aid organizations. As a result, the American Project Hope, which mainly provides healthcare, is stopping its assistance in Gaza. And Anera, an organization that helps refugees throughout the Middle East and which itself lost a staff member in Gaza, is also withdrawing for the time being. “Although we understand the serious consequences this decision has for the Palestinian people.”

But larger organizations such as UNRWA, the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders continue their work. Sea food aid is expected to resume “before the end of the month”, according to Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, when the new US jetty will be completed.

José Andrés, the founder of World Central Kitchen, addressed this issue on Wednesday with an opinion piece The New York Times and the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth to the Israeli population. His fallen colleagues, he wrote, had a face and a name. ‘Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right.’