Israel was involved in the planning of the aid convoy to the northern Gaza Strip that ended in its army attacking waiting Palestinians, killing and wounding more than 1,000 people, according to a New York Times report.
The Israeli attack on Palestinians waiting to receive humanitarian aid on Thursday, which killed at least 112 and injured over 750 others, resulted from an aid convoy “organized by Israel itself as part of a newly hatched partnership with local Palestinian businessmen,” the New York Times reported.
This is “according to Israeli officials, Palestinian businessmen and Western diplomats,” the report stated.
The report added that Israel has been involved in at least four aid convoys to northern Gaza over the past week.
Israeli officials, it said, told two Western diplomats to “fill a void in assistance to northern Gaza,” where Palestinians have been dying of famine as international aid groups have suspended operations, citing Israeli refusals to allow deliveries and also security concerns.
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The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter, the report stated.
It said “Israeli officials reached out to multiple Gazan businessmen and asked them to help organize private aid convoys to the north,” according to two of the businessmen, “while Israel would provide security.”
In the attack, at least 112 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians waiting for food aid at the Nabulsi Roundabout, in the Sheikh Ajleen district, southwest of Gaza City.
Medical teams said they were “unable to cope” with the volume of dead and injured that arrived at hospitals.
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The report quotes Jawdat Khoudary, a Palestinian businessman who helped organize some of the trucks involved in the Israeli relief initiative, as saying “My family, friends, and neighbors are dying from hunger.”
The paper further reported that Izzat Aqel, a Gazan businessman, who had helped coordinate trucks in Thursday’s convoy, said that “an Israeli military officer had asked him about 10 days earlier to organize aid trucks to northern Gaza with as much food and water as possible.”
‘Premeditated Intent’
Gaza’s Government Office accused Israel of “premeditated intent to commit this horrific massacre, executing the victims deliberately.”
It said the army “was aware that these victims had come to this area to obtain food and aid, yet they killed them in cold blood.”
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“We hold the American administration and President Biden personally, as well as the international community, Israel, and international organizations that have shirked their responsibilities, fully responsible” for the killings, the office said.
It called on the international community to provide a safe humanitarian corridor to allow the delivery of medical and humanitarian aid, as well as fuel, to northern Gaza.
The Palestine Chronicle spoke with three survivors of the ‘Flour Massacre’ who described what happened in the attack.
More than 30,500 Killed
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 30,534 Palestinians have been killed, and 71,920 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
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The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’
(The Palestine Chronicle)
The IDF is making the Nazis look like good samaritans.