GAZA authorities say the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been serving as a security front for the Israeli regime under the guise of humanitarian work across the besieged Palestinian territory.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the authorities said the Israeli occupation had used GHF as a security and military front through which arrests, assassinations, and field investigations were conducted.
Israeli forces reportedly questioned civilians during the distribution of aid under the company’s name.
The authorities said these actions were coordinated with local figures and tribal groups, including the Daesh-linked Abu Shabab gang, in an attempt to legitimise their operations inside the Gaza Strip.
The statement said there is verified information confirming that the GHF exploited its humanitarian operations to gather intelligence by contacting associations and community activists in Gaza.
The Gaza security department said the GHF has now been fully banned from operating in the territory.
It warned that any collaboration with the GHF will be considered a security breach, and those involved will face legal consequences, regardless of their motives or justifications.
875 Palestinians have been killed near Gaza aid sites: UN
The UN rights office said on Tuesday it had documented the killing of at least 875 Palestinians within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the GHF.
The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of Gaza GHF sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.
On May 26th, the GHF opened its first aid point in southern Gaza’s Rafah city.
The US privatised scheme, which has employed armed Private Military Contractors (PMC) to man its distribution points, has been widely criticised by the United Nations and international humanitarian organisations.
The GHF’s CEO, Jake Wood, even resigned one day prior to the project’s launch, citing ethical reasons as to why, and called upon the Israeli regime to allow the passage of more aid into Gaza.
Founded in Switzerland in February, the GHF serves as an umbrella for a network of private mercenary firms used by Israel to supplant the role of the United Nations in providing aid to the besieged Palestinian territory.
With no legal standing or formal mandate to operate in Gaza, the GHF now operates at the pleasure of Israel’s military.
The GHF project has the endorsement of the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Observers say a broader plan is underway to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by forcing the starving population into concentration camp-like hubs.
- There is abundant evidence pointing to the Israeli regime committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, says an academic and genocide scholar.
Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, made the remarks in an article published by the New York Times on Tuesday.
Bartov went on to say that Israel’s actions can be interpreted as a deliberate effort to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population.
He added that the goal appears to be to compel the population to evacuate Gaza entirely or, given their lack of alternative options, to weaken the besieged enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of basic necessities such as food, clean water, sanitation, and medical assistance.
‘This strategy aims to make it exceedingly challenging for Palestinians in Gaza to sustain or rebuild their community as a cohesive group,’ Bartov said.
‘My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people … I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognise one when I see one,’ he said.
‘This is not just my conclusion,’ Bartov said, adding that a growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have also concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide.
The academic further noted that the systematic destruction in Gaza reflects a policy aimed at making the revival of Palestinian life in the blockaded territory highly unlikely.
Today, the Israeli military is primarily engaged in an operation of demolition and ethnic cleansing, Bartov said, explaining that after Israel’s breach of the ceasefire on March 18th, the Israeli military has been implementing a widely publicised plan to confine the entire Gazan population to a quarter of the territory, divided into three zones, including Gaza City, the central refugee camps, and the Mawasi coastline in the Strip’s southwestern edge.
Referring to the plan announced by Israeli minister of military affairs Israel Katz for the military to construct a ‘humanitarian city’ in Rafah to house 600,000 Palestinians from the Mawasi area on July 7th, the academic said while some may view this initiative as ethnic cleansing rather than genocide, it’s important to understand the connection between the two crimes.
When an ethnic group is continuously displaced, without a safe haven, and subjected to bombing and starvation, ethnic cleansing has the potential to evolve into genocide, he stressed.
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7th, 2023, but it failed to achieve its declared objectives despite killing more than 58,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring more than 115,475 others.
The usurping entity accepted longstanding negotiation terms by the Hamas resistance group under the Gaza ceasefire, which began on January 19th.
On March 18th, however, Israel unilaterally broke the truce and resumed its relentless bombing of Gaza.
- A group of Israeli scholars and lecturers specialising in international law and the laws of armed conflict have expressed their unequivocal opposition and warned against the explicit illegality of the Tel Aviv regime’s plans to set up what it calls a ‘humanitarian city’ in southern Gaza.
Sixteen legal professors and lecturers, in a letter dated July 10th, addressed Israeli minister for military affairs Israel Katz and chief of staff of the Israeli army Major General Eyal Zamir, warning that the proposed plan to build the camp on the ruins of Rafah, which have been largely devastated by Israel, constitutes a clear breach of legal principles.
‘If implemented, the plan would constitute a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and under certain conditions, could amount to the crime of genocide,’ the letter stated.
The letter highlighted that the scheme represents a war crime involving forcible transfer and deportation. It asserted that because of the systematic and extensive nature of the plan, it qualifies as a crime against humanity in the context of deportation or forcible transfer.
Furthermore, the letter indicates that the plan constitutes a crime against humanity through the severe deprivation of liberty, contravening essential principles of international law, owing to the restriction on exiting the area.
It also constitutes the crime against humanity of persecution, resulting from the grave deprivation of fundamental rights based on collective identity, in conjunction with the declared intent to encourage emigration.
The letter indicated that any instruction to prepare for or promote the creation of a ‘humanitarian city’ in Gaza represents a clearly unlawful command that should not be obeyed.
The signatories ended by calling on all relevant authorities to publicly reject this plan, disavow it, and ensure that it is not put into action.
According to the Israeli regime, the ‘humanitarian city’ will initially house 600,000 displaced Palestinians currently living in tents in the overcrowded area of al-Mawasi along Gaza’s southern coast.
But eventually, the coastal region’s entire population of more than two million people is to be moved there.
According to official figures from the Health Ministry of Gaza, at least 58,386 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 139,077 injured since October 7th, 2023.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant, citing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the besieged coastal territory.
