Aid is being utterly weaponised, and the result is chaos

Israel has sunk to a new low in Gaza, writes Karol Balfe, CEO of ActionAid Ireland

Tue, 03 Jun, 2025 - 00:59

Karol Balfe

It’s difficult to imagine things getting worse, but at every turn they do. Israel has inflicted a brutal and inhuman campaign against the people of Gaza, the charge of genocide laid bare. A population deliberately and cruelly starved by an occupying power hell bent on death and destruction.

Since March 2, Israel enforced a near-total siege on the Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water, electricity, fuel, and medicine. The resulting humanitarian catastrophe shocked the world with the inevitability of famine becoming reality.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned that 1.1 million people, around half of Gaza’s population, are experiencing catastrophic hunger. 930,000 children - 93% of the children in Gaza - are at risk of famine.

An estimated 95% of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption, with people forced to drink polluted water, leading to soaring rates of disease and child mortality.

And at least 60 children have died of starvation and dehydration in recent weeks. Although aid agencies believe the real number is far higher and growing.

Generations of children, their lives destroyed beyond repair.

But instead of scaling up humanitarian access in response, Israel has doubled down on control. It has repeated its attacks on the UN and sidelined aid mechanisms that are established, effective and desperately waiting to get in. Just kilometres away from the suffering, over 9,000 trucks are desperate to get in across the border.

The only legal and humane solution to alleviate the suffering is total and unfettered aid access, north and south, a flooding of the Gaza strip with food, shelter, medicines and clean water.

Rather than really address the issue of starvation, Israel, through the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund, will now control all aid distribution. Rather than focusing on what the starving population needs, it will decide where, when and to who aid is distributed to.

They are using aid - one of the world’s means of expressing care and humanity in crisis - to displace and control.

Israel has made clear its intention to clear the north of Gaza. Already controlling almost 80% of the Gaza Strip, this aid distribution is another means to forcibly transfer the population illegally to certain areas and make humanitarian access conditional on screening or political and military criteria. In the last 10 days, 180,000 were displaced.

Palestinians gather to receive a hot meal at a food distribution point in the Nuseirat camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 21. Up to 1.1 million people, around half of Gaza’s population, are experiencing catastrophic hunger. Photo: Eyad Baba / AFP via Getty Images

Deliberately designed to facilitate forced displacement from the north of Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund will have distribution hubs in central and southern Gaza, forcing starving families - many of them desperately injured, elderly and too ill to undertake long, dangerous journeys through militarized zones - to collect aid for their families.

The UN described this as “engineered scarcity”, secured by private US security contractors, where those Palestinians who can reach them will receive rations.

Since last week, about 900 truckloads were submitted for Israeli approval, and 800 were approved. But just over 500 could be offloaded on the Israeli side of Kerem Shalom, and even fewer made it to the Palestinian side, where the UN and others could collect just over 200 of them, limited by insecurity and restricted access.

This is organised chaos inflicted upon a starving people. The core principle that aid must reach people where they are is ignored, with deadly results. It compounds the despair, desperation and trauma for people who have already borne too much to imagine.

In the clamber to rush and get food, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces killed seven people and wounded 47, using gunfire to shoot at a group of starving and desperate families.

There are huge concerns about Israel using biometric screening as part of their aid distribution. This is surveillance masquerading as humanitarian assistance. It's a calculated attempt to weaponise hunger and to reduce relief to a tool of control.

Palestinians carry boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on May 27. Photo: AP/Abdel Kareem Hana

This blurring of military and humanitarian roles endangers aid workers and civilians alike. We’ve already seen the cost. The humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence are not optional, but are binding under international law. Yet Israel is systematically eroding them.

And while hunger and chaos grow, every day brings new atrocities. Just last week, Israeli forces killed nine of paediatrician Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s 10 children in shelters designated as safe.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 54,000 people to date - mostly women and children - and displaced almost the entire population. What is happening is not just a war. It is the slow obliteration of an entire people.

Ireland has a role to play and must act. Our long-standing tradition of supporting human rights and international law compels us to do more than offer words of concern.

We must finally pass the Occupied Territories Bill, first proposed by Senator Frances Black in 2018. The decision by the Government this week to draft the heads of the Bill is welcome, but long overdue.

An Israeli strike in Gaza City on Sunday. Israel has inflicted a brutal and inhuman campaign against the people of Gaza, the charge of genocide laid bare. Photo: AP/Jehad Alshrafi

The outrageous atrocities we see over the last 20 months are the worst expression of a 70-year occupation of Palestinian territory. The level of violence is shocking, but it comes with this context of apartheid and occupation.

This makes the exclusion of a ban on services from the Bill unacceptable. This is a vital and substantial element which would cover online platforms such as Airbnb which have a significant presence in some of the territories, offering tourist accommodation. Legal experts have verified this can be done.

Meanwhile, many powerful countries, including the United States and EU members, continue to fund, arm, and diplomatically shield the Israeli government from accountability. At the same time, they issue platitudes about humanitarian concern.

Karole Balfe: '[Israel is] using aid - one of the world’s means of expressing care and humanity in crisis - to displace and control.'

As well as passing the Occupied Territories Bill the Irish government must lead calls for sanctions, suspension of the EU-Trade Agreement and push for an EU arms embargo.

If the Bill is passed at least Ireland can say it took action and gave example to the world at a crucial time when powerful nations were turning a blind eye. We can stand as a beacon of principled action, reminding the world that small nations can lead boldly when justice is on the line.