It is another terrible massacre in a long list in these five months of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. And it combines disheartening elements of the current reality of the strip: a crowd of Palestinian civilians, stalked by the famine caused by the siege of the Jewish State, desperately attacks aid trucks that arrive in dribs and drabs, especially in the north. The mission leads to car accidents and, in the end, shooting by Israeli soldiers against unarmed civilians.
According to local health authorities, 112 dead and more than 750 injured is the result of a bloody dawn on Al Rashid Street, southeast of Gaza City, where the wait for some flour and cans of preserves became a trap. “We don't want help like this. We don't want help and bullets together,” lamented a man next to a pile of wounded people.
Amid changing versions, Israeli military sources acknowledged that soldiers shot at people when they felt “threatened” by the approach of some people. However, officially, the Israeli army divided what happened into two parts. On the one hand, he spoke of a stampede of thousands of Palestinians on the trucks, with dozens of dead and injured "due to the pushing, trampling and running over" of the vehicles. On the other hand, he admitted that the soldiers fired at a small group that approached the tanks, wounding around a dozen.
What for a spokesperson for the Israeli Government is “a tragedy”, for the spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health it is “a new crime and massacre” committed deliberately. Paramedics, doctors and witnesses refute the Israeli version and allege that soldiers opened fire when people rushed towards the convoys.
“The aid trucks got too close to some tanks that were in the area and thousands of people simply stormed them. The soldiers fired into the crowd because people got too close to the tanks,” a witness who asked to remain anonymous told the AFP agency.
Kamel Abu Nahel, speaking to the Associated Press while being treated for a gunshot wound at Al Shifa Hospital, recorded two bursts of gunfire from soldiers each time people tried to take out flour and food. He suffered an impact on one leg and one of the vehicles ran over him on the other.
Faced with the large number of wounded and the destruction of the roads, the ambulances were not able to evacuate civilians, so many were transported in trucks, in donkey carts or simply in their arms. Hospitals, deteriorated by Israeli raids and short of supplies and fuel, were overwhelmed by the flow of patients.
As images and details became known, reactions accumulated, mostly condemnation. “Massacre” was the term that united the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, accompanied by the adjectives “horrible” and “atrocious,” respectively. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia joined in the repudiation, the United States described it as a “serious incident”, regretted “the loss of innocent lives” and took on “the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza, where innocent Palestinians are only trying to feed their families.”
On social media, Palestinian users and media dubbed the attack “the flour bag massacre,” and some Israelis also joined in the criticism. “How can you contemplate such a horrendous event in which at least dozens of hungry people who were queuing to receive bread and water die, and explain that they are guilty of their own death? 30,000 dead weigh on us. Mass starvation is upon us,” wrote Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the NGO Standing Together, which organized a protest in Tel Aviv last night to demand a ceasefire. In it, several protesters carried packages of flour.
The massacre has highlighted the famine of the 700,000 civilians who remain in northern Gaza, subjected to further isolation by the Israeli invasion. The Strip's Ministry of Health reported the death of 10 babies due to malnutrition and dehydration between Tuesday and Thursday, and in parallel the number of organizations that accuse Israel of using hunger and thirst as weapons of war are growing.
Also increasing is the pressure on Israel and the delivery of humanitarian aid, which is even less than at the beginning of the invasion, due to blockades by extremist Israeli protesters at border crossings, the slowness of Israeli inspections and restrictions on access and security. After the World Food Program suspended deliveries due to lack of guarantees ten days ago, the Israeli authorities took over the direct shipment of aid to northern Gaza, carrying out transfers at night to avoid “looting”, a measure now called into question.
