UN Rapporteur: Method of delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza is “sadistic”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, criticised the method of distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza, describing it as “sadistic.”

In a post on X, showing photos and videos of aid distribution to civilians in Gaza, on Tuesday, the UN rapporteur said “Speechless at this sadistic ‘aid delivery’ in Gaza if this is true. A US-Israeli crime of crimes using aid delivery to humiliate, kill and torture.”

Videos show people queuing in a cramped area in Rafah, southern Gaza, waiting in the sun for hours and being subjected to searches.

On Tuesday, thousands of starving Palestinians stormed aid distribution centres established by Israel in the so-called “buffer zones” in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli occupation army intervened and opened fire on them, wounding several, according to the government media office in Gaza.

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By deliberately starving people, in preparation for forced displacement, according to the UN, Israel has pushed 2.4 million Palestinians into starvation by closing the Gaza Strip’s crossings to humanitarian aid, particularly food, since 2 March.

Tel Aviv excluded the UN and international relief organisations and tasked the Israeli-American backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, rejected by the UN, with distributing extremely meagre aid in the southern Gaza Strip, in an attempt to force Palestinians to evacuate and empty the north.

However, the Israeli plan failed under the weight of the famine, after desperate Palestinian crowds stormed an aid distribution centre in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli army opened fire on them, wounding several of them, according to the media office in Gaza, which said the chaos was due to the mismanagement of the company itself.

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