By JTA
As the death toll of Gazans around aid distribution sites continues to rise, some Israeli soldiers and officers told the newspaper Haaretz that they are ordered to indiscriminately shoot at people seeking aid as a method of dispersal, JTA reported.
According to the report, the Israeli Military Advocate General instructed the IDF General Staff’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism, which investigates potential misconduct, to investigate suspected war crimes at the aid distribution sites during a closed-door meeting.
In a statement shared with the Times of Israel, the IDF confirmed the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism was probing the matter but denied that troops had been ordered by commanders to deliberately open fire on Palestinian aid seekers.
“We strongly reject the accusation raised in the article. The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the IDF said.
The controversy is the latest to embroil the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint U.S-Israeli mechanism to deliver aid in Gaza and bypass Hamas, which began working late in May. Since May 27, there have been at least 19 IDF shooting incidents related to humanitarian aid distribution.
The new report in the left-leaning newspaper included testimonies from several anonymous IDF soldiers and officers who described a daily operation that opened fire on civilians seeking aid despite them posing no threat.
“It’s a killing field,” one soldier told Haaretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”
Thousands of Gazans come to GHF’s four aid distribution sites daily as one of the only lifelines for food in the area, but the sites are only open for one hour each morning, and soldiers routinely fire into the crowds before and after they open to disperse them, according to Haaretz.
“We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces,” the anonymous soldier said. “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”
