{"id":58473,"date":"2025-06-27T21:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/ghf-boss-defends-gaza-aid-operation-after-hundreds-of-palestinians-killed-near-sites\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T21:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:29:00","slug":"ghf-boss-defends-gaza-aid-operation-after-hundreds-of-palestinians-killed-near-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=58473","title":{"rendered":"GHF boss defends Gaza aid operation after hundreds of Palestinians killed near sites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\"><b id=\"the-head-of-a-controversial-us-and-israeli-backed-aid-group-has-defended-its-work-after-repeated-incidents-of-killings-and-injuries-of-palestinians-seeking-aid.\" class=\"sc-d16436d-0 jpoiOL\">The head of a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid group has defended its work after repeated incidents of killings and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) boss Johnnie Moore told the BBC World Service&#8217;s Newshour he was not denying deaths near aid sites, but said &#8220;100% of those casualties are being attributed to close proximity to GHF&#8221; and that was &#8220;not true&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">He accused the UN and other international organisations of spreading information they could not verify. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The GHF aid system has been condemned by UN agencies, and on Friday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres branded it &#8220;inherently unsafe&#8221;. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. The search for food must never be a death sentence,&#8221; the UN chief said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 500 Palestinians have been killed and 4,000 injured on their way to get aid since GHF took over aid distribution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Within days of GHF operations starting in late May, dozens of Palestinians were killed in separate incidents on 1 and 3 June, sparking international condemnation. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Since then, the UN and aid groups have expressed alarm at the near-daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the GHF&#8217;s sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Eyewitnesses and medics have on several occasions described Israeli forces opening fire on crowds near aid points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a story on Friday in which unnamed IDF soldiers said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians near aid distribution sites, to drive them away or disperse them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Israel&#8217;s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the report calling the allegations &#8220;malicious falsehoods&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">In a statement to the BBC, the IDF said it &#8220;did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centres&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">It added it was looking to improve &#8220;the operational response&#8221; in the aid areas and had recently added new fencing and signage, and opened new routes to reach the handout zones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">For his part, the head of the GHF said &#8220;100% of the casualties are being attributed to the IDF &#8211; as best as we can tell that&#8217;s also not true&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">In statements over the past month, the IDF have several times said they fired &#8220;warning shots&#8221; at individuals who they described as &#8220;suspects&#8221; or claimed posed a threat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;We spend an extended period of time trying to understand what actually happened, if anything actually happened and whether there&#8217;s a way that we can make it less likely to happen,&#8221; Mr Moore said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;In most circumstances we haven&#8217;t been able to identify anything happening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;People need to understand that it is disinformation that people going to GHF sites are being killed, we have no evidence of that happening in proximity to our sites,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, to send journalists into Gaza, which limits our ability to verify what is happening on the ground in the territory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Mr Moore alleged that prior to GHF&#8217;s operations the majority of UN aid trucks were being hijacked at gunpoint.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The UN has said there is no evidence for a large-scale hijacking of its aid trucks. When told this, Mr Moore said the &#8220;UN is not being honest&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The volume of aid entering Gaza is still considered inadequate, despite Israel last month partially easing an 11-week blockade introduced in March. Experts have warned the territory remains on the brink of famine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The GHF is hoping to reach the milestone of providing 50 million meals in Gaza, which would equate to less than a meal a day per person since operations began.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">When pushed on whether food was really getting to the people who needed it most, Mr Moore admitted the operation was &#8220;insufficient&#8221;, but said 50 million meals was more than had been available a month ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">He said the GHF needs to scale up and hopefully work with organisations such as the UN.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;The mission is clear. We just want to feed Gazans,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">On Thursday, the US State Department announced $30m (\u00a322m; \u20ac26m) in funding for the GHF, which is its first known direct contribution to the group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas&#8217;s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory&#8217;s Hamas-run health ministry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c20rz63g1zko\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The head of a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid group has defended its work after repeated&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[488,291,1672,190,6882,2685,342,172,920,3154],"class_list":["post-58473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-aid","tag-boss","tag-defends","tag-gaza","tag-ghf","tag-hundreds","tag-killed","tag-operation","tag-palestinians","tag-sites"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - 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