Gaza! This Killing Has to Change The Status Quo

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 Here’s what we know:

The convoy was one of four that Israeli officials coordinated with local Palestinian businessmen this week. The Israeli military promised to provide security. 

• Gaza convoy that ended in death was part of a plan to try to fill a void in aid distribution.

• The U.S. has made its first airdrop of food into Gaza.

• An Israeli strike near a hospital in Rafah killed at least 11 people, Gaza health officials say.

• Harris to meet with top Israeli official as truce talks continue and concern grows over aid for Gaza.

• The U.S. should focus on stopping Israeli obstruction of aid, not on airdrops, aid group says. 

• Gaza convoy that ended in death was part of a plan to try to fill a void in aid distribution.

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Mourning a person who was killed on Thursday when Gaza residents rushed toward aid trucks and Israeli forces guarding the convoy opened fire.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The aid convoy that devolved into a disaster on Thursday, ending with scores of Palestinians dead, was part of a new Israeli operation to get desperately needed food to Gaza residents by working directly with local businessmen, according to an Israeli official, Palestinian businessmen and Western diplomats.

In a rare move, Israel was involved in organizing at least four such aid convoys to northern Gaza this past week after international aid groups suspended operations to the area, citing both Israeli refusals to greenlight aid trucks and rising lawlessness. But on Thursday, that effort backfired on Israeli planners.

Two Western diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter, said that the Israeli relief efforts were trying to fill a void left by the United Nations and other aid agencies. The Israeli military and the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment.

The United Nations has warned that more than 570,000 Gazans — particularly in northern Gaza — are facing “catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation” after nearly five months of war and an almost complete Israeli blockade of the territory after the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas.

Some residents have resorted to raiding the pantries of abandoned homes, while others have been grinding up animal feed for flour. U.N. aid convoys carrying essential goods to northern Gaza have been looted, either by civilians fearing starvation or by organized gangs.

U.N. officials had pleaded with Israel to allow them to “flood the market” with food or at least open a new border crossing into northern Gaza. Israeli officials instead decided to move to plug the gap themselves, the diplomats said.

Israeli military officials reached out to multiple Gazan businessmen and asked them to help organize at least four private aid convoys to the north, according to two Palestinian businessmen involved in the operation, Izzat Aqel and Jawdat Khoudary.

Mr. Aqel said in an interview with The New York Times that he had helped to provide some of the trucks involved in Thursday’s ill-fated convoy. An Israeli military officer, he said, had called him about 10 days earlier and asked him to organize aid trucks to northern Gaza with as much food and drink as possible.

Like Mr. Aqel, Mr. Khoudary said that he had organized some of the trucks that transported aid as part of the relief initiative involving Israel. “My family, friends and neighbors are dying from hunger,” Mr. Khoudary said, adding, “I’m a pragmatic man.”

On Thursday, an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said the particular convoy was part of several days of humanitarian operations to distribute food supplies in Gaza that Israeli troops were overseeing.

“Over the last four days, convoys like we conducted this morning — this morning was 38 truckloads — passed into northern Gaza to distribute food supplies which are international donations but on private vehicles,” he told the British network Channel 4 on Thursday.

It was unclear who purchased the aid carried on the trucks and whether other parties were involved in that part of the operation.

On Thursday, more than 100 Palestinians were killed and more than 700 others injured as they gathered in the pre-dawn darkness around trucks laden with food and other supplies, according to Gazan health officials.

Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces amid widespread panic, and doctors at Gazan hospitals said that most of those killed and injured were by gunfire. Others were crushed under trucks frantically trying to escape, witnesses said. The Gazan health officials called it “a massacre.”

The Israeli military said that its troops had opened fire after members of the crowd approached them “in a manner which endangered them.” It attributed most of the deaths to a crush as hungry Palestinians sought to seize the cargo.

Witnesses said that thousands of Gazans had camped overnight in anticipation of the arrival of the convoy on Thursday, desperate to get some of the food that was rumored to be on the way.

Since the war began, Israel has imposed restrictions on the entrance of humanitarian aid. Its bombing campaign and ground invasion have decimated Hamas’s control over northern Gaza, leaving both a gaping security vacuum and a humanitarian catastrophe.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly said that while they want to maintain “security control” in Gaza, they want civilian matters like health and education to be handled by others. But it is unclear what options they have, and former Israeli officials have warned that Israel’s government has yet to seriously plan who will take care of civilians in a devastated postwar Gaza.

The humanitarian crisis intensified last week after the World Food Program joined UNRWA, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, in halting its aid shipments to the north. The World Food Program, which is also a U.N. body, cited the overwhelming lawlessness that had taken hold in the area.

In private conversations, Israeli officials said that they had started the aid operation in the north, coordinating with private Gaza businessmen, in light of the U.N. decision to stop sending convoys there, according to the two Western diplomats.

An Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivities of the matter, confirmed that Israel had coordinated the convoys with private Gaza businessmen.

Mr. Aqel said that, beginning this week, the first three convoys in the operation — each comprising 15 to 25 trucks — had gone to northern Gaza with few problems. Some were aid trucks he had dispatched, while others were organized by other contractors, he said.

The convoy that ended in bloodshed left the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza before setting out for northern Gaza, aiming to reach areas that had not seen aid for weeks, Mr. Aqel said. In an attempt to ensure the trucks’ safety, he added, they ventured into northern Gaza at around 4:45 a.m.

By then, throngs of desperate Gazans had gathered, waiting in the dark.

“Thousands of people came to the coastal road in an attempt to take the supplies that were coming,” Mr. Aqel said. “They knew supplies were coming, so they stayed out there and waited until daybreak.”

The frantic Gazans then mobbed around the trucks in an attempt to seize the supplies, leading to the crash, gunfire, and chaos, Mr. Aqel said.

“If they had waited, we would have sent more aid to them,” he said. “But they were hungry.”

— Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon

The U.S. has made its first airdrop of food into Gaza.

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Videos Show U.S. Airdrop of Food Into Gaza

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The move was part of an effort by the Biden administration to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory.CreditCredit...AFP

The United States made its first airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Saturday, as the Biden administration tried to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory.

Three U.S. Air Force cargo planes airdropped 38,000 ready-to-eat meals, in a joint operation with the Jordanian Air Force, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Saturday.

The airdrops, which some aid experts criticized as insufficient and largely symbolic, contribute “to ongoing U.S. government efforts to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance to the people in Gaza,” the statement said. “We are conducting planning for potential follow-on airborne aid delivery missions.”

One of the U.S. officials briefing reporters on the operation on Saturday said that 66 pallets had been dropped over Gaza. The official said that drop sites had been chosen in relatively safe areas where people are sheltering and in need. The U.S. did not coordinate its operation with Hamas or any other group on the ground, the official said.

The operation was intended to be the first in a sustained campaign of airdrops, the official said, adding that the United States is also exploring other avenues of bringing more aid into Gaza, including by sea. The official and others at the briefing spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations and diplomatic efforts.

The drops came a day after President Biden said the United States would find new ways to get aid to Palestinians in desperate need because of Israel’s five-month military campaign to destroy Hamas. It also comes two days after more than 100 Palestinians were killed as Israeli forces opened fire around a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza.

Although Mr. Biden has implored Israel, which has sealed its border with Gaza, to allow more aid in, the demand for food, water and medicine after nearly five months of war there remains huge. Those conditions have put Mr. Biden under political pressure to do more to help the Palestinians even as the U.S. supplies Israel with military hardware.

Despite his frustrations with Israel’s political leadership, Mr. Biden has declined to threaten any limits on American aid to the country as a way of shaping its military offensive.

The convoy disaster on Thursday underscored the desperation Palestinians in Gaza face, and the fact that the ground convoys Israel has allowed into the territory have not provided enough relief.

U.S. officials have cautioned that airdrops cannot move supplies at the scale of convoys. Even big military cargo planes, like the C-130 airplanes used on Saturday, can carry only a fraction of the supplies that a convoy of trucks can haul. In addition, aid dropped on the ground is difficult to secure and distribute in an orderly way.

The United States’ top goal, the officials said in Saturday’s briefing, is to negotiate a pause in fighting that would allow far more truck traffic to enter.

The Biden administration is still working to achieve a limited cease-fire along with an increase in aid into the enclave and the release of “vulnerable” Israeli hostages in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Israel has agreed to a plan that would include a six-week cease-fire, another U.S. official said Saturday. The official added that the United States and other countries, including Egypt and Qatar, are trying to persuade Hamas to accept the deal.

It was not clear when the next airdrop might be, as poor weather was forecast for Gaza on Sunday.

As hunger and illness grow in Gaza, U.S. officials have pressured Israel to allow more aid convoys into the territory, with limited success.

A third U.S. official briefing reporters on Saturday said that the shortage of supplies has been compounded by lawlessness within Gaza, which has made effective distribution difficult. Criminal gangs are plundering aid and selling it for exorbitant prices. Flooding Gaza with supplies will lower prices and reduce the incentive for theft, the official said.

Some humanitarian aid experts were critical of the U.S. airdrops as far too little to make a real difference. Dave Harden, a former Gaza director at the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote on social media that “there will be no meaningful humanitarian impact in Gaza” from the drops.

Without security in the drop zone and coordination with relief workers on the ground, he said, “assume that the strongest — not the most vulnerable and needy — will take and control the food.”

On Friday, the International Rescue Committee said airdrops “do not and cannot substitute for humanitarian access.” The group urged Israel to reopen border crossings in northern Gaza and let aid flow in. Airdrops “distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale,” the committee said, adding that more than half million people in Gaza “are facing famine conditions.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

— Michael Crowley Reporting from Washington

An Israeli strike near a hospital in Rafah killed at least 11 people, Gaza health officials say.

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Videos Show Aftermath of Deadly Israeli Airstrike in Rafah

Gazan health authorities said that at least 11 people were killed and dozens were injured after an Israeli strike outside a hospital in Rafah, Gaza. The Israeli military said it had carried out a “precision strike” against “Islamic Jihad terrorists” near the hospital.

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Videos Show Aftermath of Deadly Israeli Airstrike in Rafah

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Gazan health authorities said that at least 11 people were killed and dozens were injured after an Israeli strike outside a hospital in Rafah, Gaza. The Israeli military said it had carried out a “precision strike” against “Islamic Jihad terrorists” near the hospital.CreditCredit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Israeli strike outside a hospital in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on Saturday killed at least 11 people and injured dozens of other displaced Palestinians, including children, who were sheltering in tents nearby, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

At least two health care workers, including a paramedic, were among those killed after the strike near the gate of the Emirati maternity hospital, the health ministry said.

Photos taken by news agencies showed colleagues of the paramedic, whom the health ministry identified as Abdul Fattah Abu Marai, taking his body to the nearby Kuwaiti hospital, as well as injured children lying on stretchers, as other children looked on and cried.

The Israeli military said later Saturday that, with help from Israel’s domestic security agency, it had carried out a “precision strike” against “Islamic Jihad terrorists” near the hospital. The military declined to respond to reports that the strike had injured children.

The Israeli military had previously declared that Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, would be a safe zone for civilians, and more than half of the enclave’s entire population is now crammed into it, with many living in makeshift tents over nearly every inch of available space.

But airstrikes on Rafah have continued even as the number of people sheltering there has swelled to around 1.5 million. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed that his forces will invade the city whether or not a temporary cease-fire deal is reached, despite dire warnings from humanitarian groups and many of Israel’s allies that any military operation in Rafah would have catastrophic consequences for civilians.

The news of Saturday’s strike was “outrageous and unspeakable,” the leader of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on social media, reiterating calls for a cease-fire and for the protection of healthcare workers and civilians.

The victims of the strike were sheltering near the Emirati maternity hospital, one of the last hospitals still functioning in Gaza. Despite having only five beds remaining for women giving birth, the hospital is managing more than half of the estimated 180 births happening daily in the enclave, said Dominic Allen, the State of Palestine representative for the United Nations Population Fund, a sexual and reproductive health agency known as U.N.F.P.A.

The Emirati hospital is essentially “the last hope for pregnant women in the whole of Gaza,” Mr. Allen said. A strike so close to the hospital poses a “terrifying” risk to pregnant women, newborns and the overloaded health care workers trying to care for them, he added.

— Anushka Patil

Harris to meet with top Israeli official as truce talks continue and concern grows over aid for Gaza.

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Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington this week. She is scheduled to meet with Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, in Washington on Monday.Credit...Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet with Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, in Washington on Monday, according to a White House official and a spokesman for Mr. Gantz.

During the meeting with Mr. Gantz, Ms. Harris is expected to discuss the urgency of securing a hostage deal, which would allow for a temporary cease-fire, and the need to significantly increase aid into Gaza, according to the White House official, who provided details on the condition of anonymity.

The meeting, which is scheduled to take place at the White House, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure to help secure a temporary cease-fire and hostage deal in the Israel-Hamas war and to more forcefully address the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

On Saturday, another senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic efforts, told reporters that negotiations were continuing, and that Israel had “more or less accepted” a framework for the deal and that the ball was now in Hamas’s court.

The proposal could lead to a six-week pause in the fighting, as well as the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel. President Biden had expressed hope that a deal could be reached by Monday as U.S. officials said they were working to secure a deal by the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that will start this year around March 10.

The United States also delivered its first airdrop of food into Gaza on Saturday amid warnings that the besieged enclave was on the brink of famine. Israel has imposed tight restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid, even as international relief organizations have suspended some convoys because of rising anarchy and the looting of some aid trucks inside Gaza.

Ms. Harris is also expected to discuss the American commitment to increasing the flow of aid to Gaza, including more airdrops of food, according to the official. She plans to impress upon Mr. Gantz that the number of civilian casualties must be reduced and to express her concern for the safety of more than one million displaced Palestinians in Rafah, in southern Gaza, as Israel plans to deploy ground forces there.

The meeting was reported earlier by the Reuters news service.

The number of Palestinians killed in the war surpassed 30,000 this week, according to Gazan health officials. More than 100 Palestinians were killed on Thursday after Israeli forces opened fire around a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza that crowds had descended on in a desperate attempt to get food. The Israeli military said most were killed in a crush around the vehicles, some of which ran over panicking Gazans as they sought to extricate themselves. Palestinian witnesses and doctors have said Israeli forces fired extensively, wounding and killing scores.

The deadly toll and dire conditions have prompted rising international calls for an immediate cease-fire, which the Biden administration has so far refrained from joining.

During the meeting, Ms. Harris plans to reiterate the American stance that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, which led a brutal attack on Oct. 7 that left more than 1,200 dead, according to Israeli officials. She also expects to discuss postwar plans to rebuild Gaza that would be governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Mr. Gantz, who visited Washington last year, is also scheduled to meet separately with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, his office said in a statement, as well as with members of Congress and pro-Israeli lobbyists.

It was unclear whether Mr. Gantz’s visit had the full backing of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The two men belong to different parties and have often sat on opposing sides, but Mr. Gantz, a centrist former defense minister and military chief, joined the emergency war cabinet when the war started. Mr. Gantz’s office said he had updated the prime minister on his visit so as to coordinate talking points.

— Erica L. Green and Aaron Boxerman

The U.S. should focus on stopping Israeli obstruction of aid, not on airdrops, aid group says.

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Packages of humanitarian aid were air-dropped over Gaza City on Friday. The United States says it plans to begin airdrops.Credit...Kosay Al Nemer/Reuters

International aid groups are criticizing a Biden administration planto airdrop food to desperately hungry Gazans, saying that such a move would be ineffective and would distract from more meaningful measures like pushing Israel to lift its partial siege of Gaza.

“Airdrops do not and cannot substitute for humanitarian access,” the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based aid organization, said in a statement on Saturday. “Airdrops are not the solution to relieve this suffering, and distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale.”