GENEVA

The Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is "slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid" and must be dismantled immediately, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Friday, denouncing the one-month-old mechanism as a deliberately dehumanizing operation forcing civilians to risk death for food.

"With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled," MSF said in a statement.

The organization blamed the scheme, coordinated by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), for turning basic food aid into a deadly ordeal. "The way supplies are distributed forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100-day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies," MSF said.

Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, described the system as a trap. "The four distribution sites, all located in areas under the full control of Israeli forces after people had been forcibly displaced from there, are the size of football fields surrounded by watch points, mounds of earth, and barbed wire," he said.

"The fenced entrance gives only one access point in or out. GHF workers drop the pallets and the boxes of food and open the fences, allowing thousands in all at once to fight down to the last grain of rice."

He added: "If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot. If they arrive late, they shouldn't be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone,' they get shot."

MSF called on Israeli authorities and allies to "lift the siege on food, fuel, medical, and humanitarian supplies" and restore the UN-coordinated humanitarian system that existed before the war.