A. Mansour
Truthout / July 4, 2025
Hunger in Gaza isn’t accidental — it’s managed. It’s enforced. And now, aid is being militarized.
The last time I tried to get food aid in Gaza, I nearly died.
It was early morning in Rafah, and I hadn’t eaten properly in days. I woke before the sun rose, stomach aching, body weak, and met up with my friend Abu Naji. We planned to walk five kilometers to a zone near Al-Alam — “the Flag,” as people call it — where humanitarian aid was rumoured to be distributed. Word on the street said it would open at 10:00 am, and we were desperate enough to believe it.
We passed destroyed buildings, endless lines of makeshift tents, and the slow shuffle of others just like us — starving, exhausted, and hoping for a few cans of food. We arrived around mid-morning. There were no signs. No aid workers. No water. No shelter. Only thousands of people crowding together under the eye of Israeli surveillance drones, waiting in silence. The zone wasn’t marked, but people knew where to go — because they’d seen others try it. And seen some of them die trying.
Just before noon, Israeli soldiers fired gunshots into the sky. That was the signal: Move forward. The crowd surged as one. There were no organized lines, no distribution points — just scattered supplies thrown from trucks or dropped by parachute. People climbed over each other to grab whatever they could before it was gone. I wished I were stronger. Not a writer. Not a program coordinator. I wished I had the muscles to fight my way through, to claim a small box of pasta or a can of tuna. But my body has been malnourished for months. None of us in Gaza have eaten properly in nearly two years. I watched people push forward. I saw a man I knew step a few meters outside an invisible boundary — one no one had explained, one that didn’t exist on any map — and get shot in the chest. He collapsed onto the sand and didn’t move.
The soldiers never shouted warnings. There were no fences. Only live fire enforcing invisible borders. And hunger enforcing risk.
I turned around and walked away. I didn’t get any food. But I survived. That was my first and last time attempting to reach humanitarian aid in Rafah.
The truth is, what’s being called a “humanitarian operation” in Gaza is something else entirely. It’s not simply broken. It’s being used as a weapon. Hunger here isn’t accidental — it’s managed. It’s enforced. And now, it’s being militarized.
The so-called aid zone we walked to that day wasn’t managed by any recognized relief organization. There were no UN workers or Red Crescent staff. Instead, the operation was linked to an entity calling itself the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). According to lawyers and watchdog groups in Switzerland, GHF has no medical or aid personnel on the ground. Instead, it has partnered with a U.S.-linked private security firm named Safe Reach Solutions. This company isn’t made up of aid workers — it’s made up of contractors. Former U.S. military, intelligence officers, and data analysts, many earning up to $1,000 a day. Some are deployed in the very zones where civilians like me go to collect aid. Their real job isn’t just “security.” According to investigations by TRIAL International and the Alliance of Lawyers for Palestine, the GHF contractors are tasked with collecting visual and behavioural intelligence on Palestinians. They use quadcopters and surveillance drones to track people’s movements, scan their faces, and monitor their behaviour — building profiles in hopes of identifying “targets.” In the process, people are dying.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach aid, while thousands more have been injured and several others remain missing.
These are not accidents. This is not poor planning. This is a system that weaponizes food and fear at the same time. One that invites you to risk your life for a bag of flour — then kills you when you step the wrong way. This is a system where every hungry child becomes a potential data point. Where every grandmother in a food line is scanned from the sky. Where every facial expression could place you on a kill list.
What’s worse is that these operations are invisible to much of the world. Foreign journalists haven’t been allowed into Gaza for nearly 20 months. Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists, and rejected thousands of visa requests from international media. What Gaza has is just overlapping shell organizations with unclear responsibilities and zero accountability. GHF, despite presenting itself as a Swiss humanitarian group, is also registered in the United States. Several Swiss lawyers have filed legal complaints demanding investigations into the group’s nonprofit status and its ties to militarized operations. Meanwhile, other actors — like Nathan Mook, former CEO of World Central Kitchen — have appeared in parallel efforts tied to projects like the U.S. floating pier and entities like the Maritime Humanitarian Aid Foundation, which also operate without clear oversight.
In a recent interview on CNN Türk, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state described the situation in Gaza as one where “the people are hostages.” That wasn’t a slip. That was a policy. When food becomes bait, civilians become bargaining chips. And as journalist Rasha Nabil replied during that same interview, “This is injustice. The world has become a jungle.”
Israel continues to justify its military assault as a mission to retrieve hostages. But for most of us in Gaza, that justification feels like a cruel illusion. The war has gone on for over a year and eight months. Hospitals have been flattened. Neighbourhoods erased. Our water systems bombed. Some Palestinians, desperate for any end to the violence, have called for the release of Israeli captives —unconditionally — hoping it might take away Israel’s last excuse for its brutal campaign. But that desperation only reveals the divide between civilians and the political factions that claim to speak for them. For Hamas, the hostages are a bargaining chip. But for Israel, the people of Gaza are the same.
I do not support Hamas. I do not support any group that plays with lives. But I also do not support a system where international aid is a tracking device. Where relief is distributed by men with guns and drones. Where death and data are delivered in the same package.
Aid must never be a weapon. It must never be bait. It must never be a tool to punish an occupied people. Humanitarian relief must return to the hands of real humanitarian organizations — neutral, transparent, and protected by international law. Private military contractors have no place in our hunger. Governments that fund or support them — including the United States and Switzerland — must investigate the systems they’ve helped build and the lives they’ve helped destroy.
We are not numbers. We are not “risks.” We are not enemy targets because we are hungry. We are people — grieving, broken, surviving — and the world is watching as we are starved, shot at, and turned into data.
And sometimes, it watches in silence.
A. Mansour is the pen name of a writer in Gaza
