Deadly Israeli attack in Gaza on convoy carrying aid from Cyprus further paralyzes food aid

The already extremely slow delivery of aid to the starving people of Gaza suffered a new blow on Monday due to an Israeli airstrike on a convoy of World Central Kitchen (WCK), an American organization that mainly provides food aid.

Seven employees were killed. Among them, an Australian, a Pole, a British and an aid worker with a Canadian and an American passport. The Palestinian driver also did not survive the attack.

Immediately afterwards, WCK suspended its relief operations in the Gaza Strip until further notice. Israel came under worldwide criticism and many countries, including the United States, strongly urged a swift and thorough investigation.

WCK director Erin Gore expressed her anger in a written statement at what she described as “a deliberate attack” by the Israeli army. “This is not just an attack on WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations working in the most difficult conditions where food is used as a weapon. This is inexcusable.”

Vehicles were marked

The organization, set up by renowned chef José Andrés and his wife, pointed out that the convoy’s vehicles were clearly marked, including on the roof, as emergency responders. The convoy’s route had been coordinated in advance with the Israeli army and the occupants wore bulletproof vests bearing the WCK logo. The area where the attack took place was designated as a non-conflict area.

The convoy had just delivered some of the aid that WCK had previously shipped from the sea via Cyprus to a warehouse in the town of Deir Al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip when it came under fire. The convoy consisted of two armored cars and an unprotected vehicle. WCK was the first organization to use the maritime route via Cyprus for relief efforts, because the more obvious supply of aid via the land route has been stagnant for months due to various Israeli restrictions.

So far, only one shipment had arrived at a makeshift pier and offloaded off the Gazan coast. Three more ships had arrived just on Tuesday with four hundred tons of relief supplies and had begun unloading. However, after suspension of WCK operations, they returned to Cyprus with 240 tons still on board. The United States plans to build a floating pier elsewhere off the Gazan coast where larger ships carrying larger quantities of aid can dock, but that is not yet available.

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‘Accidental attack’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just released from hospital after hernia surgery, acknowledged on Tuesday that Israeli forces had carried out an “unintentional attack” that killed innocent civilians. Earlier, army spokesman Daniel Hagari had already expressed his condolences to the relatives. He also praised the good cooperation that the army had had with WCK until then. Both Netanyahu and Hagari promised to get to the bottom of the matter so that such mistakes would not happen again.

The direct consequence of the incident, however, is that the suffering population of Gaza will receive even less aid for the time being than was already the case. According to UN experts, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are teetering on the brink of acute famine. Many are already seriously malnourished. Dozens of children have already succumbed to this.

Close to the border posts with Egypt and Israel, thousands of trucks with large quantities of aid have been ready for months, but Israel has only allowed them into the area at a slow pace. For example, WCK, which has only been active in the region since the start of the Gaza war, has twenty trucks ready to enter the Gaza Strip every day, but Israel usually only allowed ten of them through. UNRWA, traditionally by far the largest aid provider, is no longer allowed by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip with food convoys at all, because the organization is said to be colluding with Hamas. Nevertheless, Israel denies that it is deliberately obstructing food aid for the Gaza Strip.

By allowing so little aid into the Gaza Strip in practice, Israel is ignoring the instructions of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. This announced two so-called provisional measures on Thursday that require Israel to open more border crossings for food, drinking water, fuel and other essential relief goods for Gazan citizens.

These measures result from the lawsuit that South Africa has filed against Israel because, according to South Africa, Israel is guilty of genocide with its ruthless actions in the Gaza Strip. As a result, it would not have complied with the genocide treaty, to which it is a party. The sixteen judges of the court are still considering the merits of this accusation.

Lack of civil administration

The attack on the WCK convoy once again underlines how dangerous the relief effort in the Gaza Strip is. Not only is there still fierce fighting in many places, anarchy has often broken out outside those zones due to the lack of a functioning civil administration. Gangs fight each other for the few aid supplies to the death, and desperate citizens are often no longer prepared to patiently wait their turn at food distributions.

UNRWA recently said that 173 of its employees have been killed since October 7, when the war between Hamas and Israel began with a bloody attack by Hamas on southern Israel.

The Americans, with the most powerful army in the world at their side, have also made it clear that they do not intend to deploy troops in the Gaza Strip for the orderly distribution of aid arriving at the pier they are building. Who should do this and how remains shrouded in mystery for the time being.

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