GHF boss defends Gaza aid operation after hundreds of Palestinians killed near sites

The leader of a controversial aid group in the United States and Israeli defended his work after repeated incidents of murders and injuries of Palestinians in search of aid.

Gaza Patron Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Johnnie Moore, told the news of the BBC World Service that he did not refuse deaths close to the aid sites, but said that “100% of these victims were allocated to the proximity of the GHF” and it was “not true”.

He accused the UN and other international information dissemination organizations that they could not verify.

The GHF aid system was condemned by United Nations agencies and Friday, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, described it as “intrinsically dangerous”.

“Any operation that channels civilians in militarized areas is intrinsically dangerous. The search for food should never be a death sentence,” said the UN chief.

The Ministry of Health managed by Hamas in Gaza said that more than 500 Palestinians were killed and 4,000 injured on their way to get help since GHF has taken the distribution of aid.

In the days following GHF operations from the end of May, dozens of Palestinians were killed in separate incidents on June 1 and 3, aroused international conviction.

Since then, the UN and the aid groups have expressed the alarm in the face of the daily reports of the death of the Palestinians near the GHF sites, which are inside Israeli military areas.

Eye witnesses and doctors have repeatedly described the Israeli forces that open fire on crowds near help points.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Friday a story in which the TDI unnamed TDI soldiers declared that they had been ordered to shoot unarmed civilians near the aid distribution sites, to drive or disperse them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly rejected the report calling for the allegations of “malicious lies”.

In a declaration to the BBC, the FDI said that it “had not asked the forces to deliberately draw civilians, including those who approached distribution centers”.

He added that he was trying to improve “the operational response” in the aid areas and had recently added new fences and signaling, and opened new routes to reach the document zones.

For his part, the chief of the GHF said that “100% of the victims are allocated to the FDI – as best we can say that this is not true”.

In the statements in the last month, the FDIs said several times that they had fired “warning” from individuals they have called “suspects” or affirmed by a threat.

“We are spending an prolonged period trying to understand what really happened, if something has really happened and if there is a way to make things less likely to happen,” said Moore.

“In most cases, we could not identify anything.”

“People must understand that it is the disinformation that people who go to GHF sites are killed, we have no evidence that this happens near our sites,” he added.

Israel does not allow international press organizations, including the BBC, to send journalists to Gaza, which limits our ability to verify what is happening in the field on the territory.

Mr. Moore alleged that before GHF operations, the majority of United Nations aid trucks were diverted under the threat of a weapon.

The UN said that there was no evidence for a large -scale diversion of its aid trucks. When he was told, Mr. Moore said that “the UN was not honest”.

The volume of aid entering Gaza is still considered inadequate, despite Israel last month last month, an 11 -week blockage introduced in March. Experts have warned that the territory remains on the brink of famine.

The GHF hopes to cross the milestone of the supply of 50 million meals in Gaza, which would be equivalent to less than one meal per day per person since the start of operations.

When he pushed if the food really came to the people who needed it most, Mr. Moore admitted that the operation was “insufficient”, but said that 50 million meals were more than available a month ago.

He said GHF must evolve and hope to work with organizations such as the UN.

“The mission is clear. We just want to feed the gasans,” he added.

On Thursday, the US State Department announced $ 30 million (22 million pounds sterling; 26 million euros) in funding from the GHF, which is its first direct contribution known to the group.

The Israeli army launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the attack on October 7, 2023 in Hamas against Israel, during which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Ministry of Health managed by Hamas in the territory.