Israel uses aid to exploit and humiliate
Khaled El-Hissy The Electronic Intifada 1 September 2025
Palestinians in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel on 19 August 2025.
Abdullah Abu Al-Khair APA imagesOn 26 July, Yousef Alnono, a Palestinian from Gaza and a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, was at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, waiting for word about his uncle who had been shot by an Israeli soldier in the head the day before, and who later succumbed to his wounds.
Alnono, 23, who related to The Electronic Intifada this account, said that he met an injured man in his twenties in the same hallway and chatted with him about how he was injured.
The man told Alnono that he had ventured the week before to the aid convoys near Zikim boundary crossing in northern Gaza to get food when Israeli soldiers suddenly opened fire on the crowd.
He ducked and took cover behind a sand barrier before shrapnel hit his hand and leg, making him fall to the ground and scream for help.
It was like doomsday, the man said, as no one could come to his aid since they were trying to survive the Israeli bullets.
An hour later, Israeli soldiers approached him and told him they would treat his wounds.
The man was terrified but hopeful – at least, he told Alnono, he might get medical care.
After basic treatment, one of the soldiers handed him half a pack of cigarettes and some aid.
Then the soldiers began questioning him, asking which neighborhood he was from and whether he knew anyone there affiliated with Hamas or the resistance.
Terrified, the man felt he had no choice but to respond.
The soldiers reassured him not to be afraid and gave him a number to call, promising him more aid if he returned with additional information.
What is the point of the GHF?
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a flawed US body trusted by Israel to deliver aid in Gaza – launched its first aid delivery on 27 May 2025.
This came after international pressure on Israel to allow aid into the Gaza Strip, following its halt on 1 March with accusations that Hamas was looting it, despite lacking any credible evidence.
From 27 May to 5 August, Israel has killed at least 859 Palestinian aid seekers near GHF sites.
Doctors Without Borders said that the GHF “is forcing Palestinians to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minuscule amounts of aid.”
The GHF tries to give the impression that Israel provides aid when it is actually exploiting aid distribution to humiliate and kill starving Palestinians in Gaza while spreading chaos among them.
But what does that look like on the ground? The Electronic Intifada talked with two people in Gaza to elaborate more on the GHF’s schemes.
Sites are intentionally distant
Muhammad Shallah, 21, has visited GHF sites at least four times and managed to secure aid twice for his family of nine. He told The Electronic Intifada that these distribution points are “a trap for young people and a humiliation.”
Only if people can reach the aid site before being shot, GHF distributes inadequate aid chaotically.
“They are a grave insult to us and not considered assistance,” Shallah said.
The four distribution points – two in Rafah’s far south, one in eastern Khan Younis and one in Netzarim – are intentionally distant from where most people relocated in southern or northern Gaza.
Many Palestinians – like the elderly, people with disabilities, the injured, orphans and widows – can’t make it to these far-off points.
People walk from their dwellings until they reach an area only demarcated by Israeli soldiers firing warning shots – many of which are deadly or injurious.
People then wait until they are allowed to move forward to the distribution points – a distance of approximately 2.8 kilometers, according to Shallah, “along a path that resembles desert sand, scattering dust if people start running.”
Killing as a game
But how do people know they are allowed to move forward?
Israel updated its aid zones with what eyewitnesses in Gaza call “the flag system.”
“Seeing a red flag means you are prohibited from approaching the area,” Shallah said, “where a green one means it’s safe.”
According to The Jerusalem Post, the Israeli military claimed it was “working to minimize any clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces, noting that it worked to reorganize the site with new fences, signage, and other improvements.”
For Israeli soldiers, “preventing clashes” looks like planting two flags and shooting people.
But even with a green flag, Shallah said, “a soldier can shoot and kill you – it has happened many times.”
Are Israeli soldiers having fun when shooting Palestinians?
“It is almost as if a game is being played,” according to Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon volunteering in Gaza.
He said the soldiers follow a systematic pattern in targeting specific body parts on different days: the abdomen, the head, the neck, limbs – even the testicles.
If Palestinians aren’t killed or wounded, they might get abducted or, at best, pepper-sprayed or beaten.
And if Palestinians opt out of going to an aid site, out of fear of getting shot, they – and their children – could quite possibly die of starvation.
Chaos and theft
The GHF’s chaotic distribution strategy has not only starved Palestinians and made food scarce, it has also created thievery.
“People turned to theft because they want to stay alive,” Shallah said. “Israel is the one to blame here.”
Israel orchestrates theft by deliberately letting aid trucks pass without protection through exposed areas and before the eyes of people in desperate need of food.
“I can’t blame these thieves – they have no other options,” said Muhammad al-Ghoz, 29, a teacher who has been displaced to Deir al-Balah since the beginning of the Israeli genocide.
When thieves manage to get aid – often the only commodity around – they dictate sky-high prices to sell in Gaza’s markets.
As a result, even when aid is technically available, few people can afford it, pushing the hunger deeper.
In response, some people in Gaza launched a boycott of the markets. In Deir al-Balah, markets were closed and purchases halted to pressure merchants to lower their prices.
It didn’t work.
“People needed to eat and were left with two choices: buy at a high price or don’t buy at all,” al-Ghoz said. “I chose to buy a kilo of flour at a high price for 150 shekels just to feed my son Rakan.”
Israel is to blame, al-Ghoz said, as it “controls whatever enters Gaza right now.”
If Israel lets aid enter Gaza at a greater rate, “those thieves,” he said, “will be forced to comply with supply and demand.”
The man – or thief who has the flour and decides to sell it – sells it at a high price to protect himself from the famine now and in the future.
“I’m not defending him, but he’s a human being just like the rest of us, trying to ensure his survival,” al-Ghoz said.
Khaled El-Hissy is a journalist from Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip and an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada.