The War on Humanitarian Aid Workers

It has been a war on humanitarian workers from the start.

The Israeli military killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK) in three consecutive targeted attacks on their vehicles. The vehicles were marked with the WCK logo, they were traveling on an approved route in a so-called safe zone, and their movements were coordinated with Israeli forces. Despite all these precautions, the vehicles were struck one after another and all of the passengers were killed. WCK has suspended their operations in Gaza as a result of the killings. Other humanitarian agencies are considering doing the same because of the extraordinary danger to their workers.

Netanyahu claims that it was an “unintentional hit,” but that simply isn’t credible. There have been too many similar attacks on humanitarian workers throughout the war for anyone to believe that this was just an unfortunate accident. We heard many of the same excuses from the Saudi coalition in Yemen when their jets would bomb clearly marked hospitals and clinics. When a client government commits an outrageous crime like this, it claims it was not intentional and promises to investigate itself. Washington takes the denials at face value because acknowledging the reality would require the U.S. to stop arming the client to the teeth.

The Israeli war in Gaza has been a war on humanitarian workers from the start. The New York Times reports:

Humanitarian workers have been killed throughout the war in Gaza. Since the war started, 176 workers for UNRWA, the United Nations body that provides aid to Palestinians, have been killed, including in the line of duty, said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications. Several other aid groups say their staff members have been killed in airstrikes.

Doctors Without Borders has reported many such attacks on their personnel and facilities. The briefing that the MSF Secretary General gave to the Security Council in February described how Israeli forces had repeatedly attacked their facilities, people, and vehicles:

Our fears are rooted in experience. Just 48 hours ago, as a family sat around their kitchen table in a house sheltering MSF staff and their families in Khan Younis, a 120mm tank shell exploded through the walls, igniting a fire, and killing two people and severely burning six others. Five of the six injured are women and children.

We took every precaution to protect the 64 humanitarian staff and family members from such an attack by notifying warring parties of the location and clearly marking the building with an MSF flag.

Despite our precautions, our building was struck not only by a tank shell but by intense gunfire. Some were trapped in the burning building while active shooting delayed ambulances from reaching them. This morning, I am looking at photos that show the catastrophic extent of the damage and I am watching videos of rescue teams removing the charred bodies from the rubble.
 
This is all too familiar—Israeli forces have attacked our convoys, detained our staff, and bulldozed our vehicles, and hospitals have been bombed and raided. Now, for a second time, one of our staff shelters has been hit. This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.

All of this underscores the urgent need for a halt to the war. Humanitarian workers cannot do their work if they are repeatedly coming under attack despite taking every appropriate precaution. Aid agencies will not be able to deliver basic necessities under these conditions. Many will choose not to put their people at such unacceptably high risk. Taken together with the kneecapping of UNRWA’s relief efforts and the severe aid restrictions at land crossings, it is obvious that there is a pattern of deliberately blocking aid delivery while mass starvation is taking place.

The killing of the WCK workers sends a clear message to the world that the Israeli military believes it can target and kill anyone in Gaza with impunity, including staff members from a well-known Western NGO. The U.S. has given them every reason to believe that there will never be any consequences for anything they do in Gaza. This attack is also part of the Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon against the population. By making conditions in Gaza so dangerous that aid workers cannot operate safely and effectively, the Israeli military is hastening the spread of the famine that its policies have caused.