TEHRAN - On Tuesday, thousands of Palestinians clambered over fences to reach the humanitarian supplies at a distribution site run by the previously unknown, U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in Rafah, southern Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.

The chaotic scenes of the starved people scrambling desperately for food were recorded in history as a disgrace for humanity. The scenes were also recorded as a humiliation of the Palestinians in Gaza.

According to eyewitnesses, some 50 people suffered injuries because of the stampede. Also, a Palestinian was killed as Israeli soldiers fired in the air to disperse hungry people.

“This is not a natural disaster. It is the brutal combination of manufactured violence and collective global apathy. The famine in Gaza is not collateral damage, but rather the intentional consequence of policies designed by the Israeli government to maximize suffering and death,” Middle East Eye said in a commentary on Wednesday.

No wise person can understand why humanitarian aid was halted to the Gaza Strip for 11 weeks. The United Nations said Israel was using food as a weapon.

If Israel’s only aim was to starve Hamas fighters to force them to surrender, which did not happen, what was the sin of hundreds of thousands of others? The entire world, particularly Palestinians, will not forget these scenes in which the people of Gaza were intentionally starved.

Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, condemned the chaotic scenes at the aid distribution point as “undignified” and “unsafe.”

Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office, also criticized the GHF aid plan as “a distraction from what is actually needed, which is a reopening of all the crossings into Gaza, a secure environment within Gaza and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border.”

Hardin Lang, vice president for policy and programs for Refugees International, also said the U.S.-Israel-backed aid initiative is run by military, rather than humanitarian, logic.

The way the food was distributed was another reflection of the Israel-U.S. joint work that has been in force since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, mostly provoked by Israel. 

When Paul Bremer dissolved the Iraqi army in May 2003, 400,000 Iraqi troops were put out of work. The move set the stage for the insurgency to the extent that secular army officers commanded ISIS terrorists when they invaded Iraq.

It was quite clear that a sea of people who have suffered from massive starvation would not remain in queues to receive food aid, especially as the amount of food being distributed is like a drop in the sea.

“This is not the way in which you try to feed a population, much less a population that is on the verge of famine,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking from Washington, DC.

The United Nations was predicting such chaotic scenes, and that is why they have refused to cooperate with any scheme that fails to respect fundamental humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality.