US-Backed Israeli Forces Turn Gaza Aid Sites into ‘Regular Bloodbaths’ – HRW

August 1, 2025 News
Gaza aid center was overrun by starving crowds. (Photo: video grab)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

“US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.” HRW

Israeli forces at sites of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution scheme “have routinely opened fire on starving Palestinian civilians in acts that amount to serious violations of international law and war crimes,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday.

“Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,” said Belkis Wille, HRW associate crisis and conflict director. “US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”

According to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, 91 Palestinians seeking aid were killed in the last 24 hours, raising the total number killed to 1,330 and over 8,818 injured, since the end of May when the GHF was launched.

UN ‘Should be Permitted’

HRW said states should press Israeli authorities to immediately stop using lethal force as a method of crowd control against Palestinian civilians, lift unlawful sweeping restrictions on the entry of aid, and suspend this flawed distribution system.

Instead, the UN and other humanitarian organizations “should be permitted” to resume aid distributions across Gaza at scale and without restrictions, “as they have proven able to feed the population in line with humanitarian standards and as required by binding rulings by the International Court of Justice in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.”

The GHF distribution scheme began in May, after more than 11 weeks of Israel’s total blockade on the besieged enclave, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians, including children, due to starvation.

HRW said Israeli authorities justified the GHF aid mechanism by claiming that Hamas diverted aid, “but New York Times reporting, based on Israeli military sources, indicates that the Israeli military does not have evidence that Hamas systematically diverted aid from the UN.”

The GHF system is run by two US private subcontracted companies: Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, in coordination with the Israeli military, HRW noted.

Witnesses on the Ground

In July, HRW interviewed 10 people who were on the ground in Gaza in recent months and “witnessed violence at or near aid sites, or who treated those injured and killed at the sites.”

Those interviewed included Anthony Aguilar, a retired US Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel, who worked in Gaza as a security contractor for UG Solutions, including in the control centers and at dozens of distributions at all four distribution sites between May and June; and six Palestinian witnesses to “violent incidents” related to the distributions.

Researchers also analyzed satellite imagery at different spatial resolutions, verified videos and photographs including content taken by Aguilar, analyzed document metadata, and reviewed social media posts by GHF.

HRW pointed out that the GHF mechanism “requires Palestinians to trek across dangerous and destroyed terrain.”

‘Free-for-All’

According to five witnesses, Israeli forces control the movement of Palestinians to the sites through the use of live ammunition. Inside the sites, the distribution of aid itself is an uncontrolled “free-for-all,” as Aguilar described it, that “often leaves the most vulnerable and weakest people with nothing.”

HRW also analyzed announcements made on GHF’s Facebook page of 105 distributions across the 4 sites and found that 54 distribution windows were under 20 minutes long and 20 distributions were announced as finished before their official opening time had begun.

Difficult and Risky Journey

One Palestinian man told the rights organization that he left his home at about 9 p.m., trying to reach a site that was due to open at 9 a.m. the next day.

On the way, he said, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and others as they were walking towards the site: “If you stopped walking, or did anything they didn’t want, they fired at you.” In a separate incident, Aguilar said he witnessed an Israeli tank fire on a civilian vehicle just outside Site 4, which he believed killed four people inside, on June 8. Another contractor who spoke to ITV News described the same attack on the car.

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Another Palestinian man described to HRW the difficult and risky journey: “So many people who need aid are not getting it because they are not able to make it all the way there.”

“Those who do go are taking their luck into their own hands, and it’s remarkable if they come back alive,” he stressed.

According to seven witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Israeli forces “regularly fired on civilians.”

Live Fire Used

Three Palestinian witnesses and Aguilar also claimed they witnessed armed guards within the GHF sites using live fire and other weapons against civilians during aid distributions, HRW said.

“These armed guards would apparently be UG Solutions contractors, given that the letter from the counsel of GHF and SRS confirmed that the only contractors with weapons inside the distribution sites are from UG Solutions,” the organization stated.

However, GHF, SRS, and UG Solutions “have denied the allegations that their contractors used force against civilians and stated that UG Solutions personnel only use deadly force as a last resort and have never harmed civilians or aid seekers.”

Failure to Address Mass Starvation

HRW also stated that the aid mechanism “has failed to address mass starvation in Gaza.”

Even though GHF’s legal representatives told HRW that they have delivered 95 million meals in Gaza, as of July 28, the organization said, it was not enough to meet the needs of the starving population.

Even at full capacity at the four sites, the organization said,“the GHF scheme is only capable of providing about 60 trucks of food per day, according to Aguilar, as compared to the 600 trucks per day that entered Gaza under the UN-led aid scheme during the ceasefire in early 2025.”

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“The repeated use of lethal force against Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces, without justification, violates both international humanitarian and human rights law,” HRW stated.

It said it was not aware “of any evidence” in the cases documented that those killed represented an imminent threat to life at the time they were killed.

“The intentional use of lethal force by those exercising policing powers without lawful justification also violates human rights law,” the organization said, adding that regular killings by Israeli forces near GHF sites “also amount to war crimes, given all the evidence indicating that these are deliberate, targeted killings of persons the Israeli authorities would know would be Palestinian civilians.”

Funding Concerns

HRW also raised concern that the source of funding for GHF’s first month of distributions “remains unknown.”

In its letter to the organization, counsel for GHF said it “received $100 million from a government other than the United States or Israel,” without specifying the government, the organization noted.

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“The Trump administration sent the allocation by circumventing congressional approvals,” HRW said, adding that the “United States is complicit in Israeli violations of the laws of war in Gaza, given its provision of substantial military aid despite knowledge of the continuing grave violations.”

Pursuant to their obligations under the Genocide Convention, “states should use all forms of their leverage, including targeted sanctions, an arms embargo and suspension of preferential trade agreements, to stop Israeli authorities’ ongoing atrocity crimes,” HRW stated.

“It is indefensible that, instead of using its significant leverage to press Israel to end its ongoing acts of genocide, the US is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians as a method of crowd control,” Wille states. “States should urgently act to stop the extermination of Palestinians.”

Read HRW’s full report here.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

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1 Comment

  1. As there is no genuine intention on the part of the powerful states to stop Israel’s genocidal campaign, I would like to challenge all people around the world, particularly those who have supported the Zionist regime or remained silent regarding the humanitarian catastrophes in Gaza, to ponder over the following questions for a while:

    How would you feel if you lived in Gaza experiencing the same hardships?
    If you were forced out of your house and had no safe place to stay, nothing to eat, and nobody to protect you?
    if your dears were killed or badly injured in front of you and there was no help available?
    If you observed starving children pleading for food but you could do nothing for them?

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