The killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers could mark a turning point in aid to Israel and in long-frustrated efforts to bring relief to Palestinians on the brink of starvation.
However, an Israel Defense Forces investigation suggests that this was a single “serious mistake”, but the increased costs faced by aid agencies throughout the war would rather protect humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip. The report points to systemic flaws in the Israel Defense Forces' approach. According to the United Nations, a total of 224 humanitarian aid workers have been killed since the start of the war.
Monday's strike sparked global outrage, which combined with international pressure to force Israel to open new doors for humanitarian aid.
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have expressed rare contrition over the killings, and the Israel Defense Forces said Friday that an investigation revealed three consecutive missile attacks targeting aid convoys. As a result, it was announced that two senior officers had been dismissed. Possible violation of IDF protocol.
The IDF said in a press conference on Friday that while the WCK was correctly coordinating its actions with Israeli authorities, the officers made three mistakes. First, they didn't see or read the messages identifying the convoy. One of the soldiers then decided to open fire on the vehicle on insufficient grounds, saying he saw someone entering the vehicle with what he thought was a gun but was more likely a bag.
The IDF said the third mistake was not only attacking the first vehicle, but also continuing to attack the second and third vehicles.
“The real question is not who made the mistake,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday in response to the IDF investigation. “Military strategy and procedures allow these mistakes to be made over and over again,” he said.
Unlike the killings of the WCK staff, who were nationals of the United States, Canada, Australia, Poland, and the United Kingdom, other deaths involving mostly Palestinian aid workers have elicited little outrage or notice from the Israeli government or international governments. Not yet.
NBC News reviewed documents, public statements and interviews and found a pattern of attacks on aid workers and humanitarian infrastructure in the months leading up to Monday's attack. These include two previous incidents involving WCK, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) dropping a 1,000 pound bomb near a housing worker's building, and the bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières/Médecins Sans Frontières worker's home. Includes incidents. MSF).
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has suffered more attacks than any other agency since October 7, resulting in the deaths of 179 staff members.
The attack resulted in a direct reduction in the supply of aid to Gaza's starving people. After Monday's killing, at least four organizations halted aid shipments to Gaza, citing the risk to their staff. These include WCK, which turned three cargo ships en route to Gaza and returned 240 tonnes of much-needed food aid to a port in Cyprus. .
But even before then, the destruction, ongoing hostilities, and subsequent irregularities had disrupted aid supplies to large parts of Gaza, especially in the north, where the threat of starvation is greatest.
To operate in combat zones, aid agencies rely on a process called deconfliction, which allows militaries to take steps to prevent unintended attacks on aid workers, who are protected by international humanitarian law. In Gaza, government agencies are working with the Coordination of Territorial Government Activities (COGAT), the official Israeli government agency that acts as a liaison between aid agencies and the military, and also controls access for personnel and the transportation of aid to Gaza. Daily notifications of convoy movements. , provide the coordinates of the guest house and warehouse.
Still, they were repeatedly attacked.
“Collision avoidance systems are effectively fiction,” said Ciaran Donnelly, IRC's senior vice president of crisis response recovery and development.
“This pattern of attacks is either intentional or shows reckless incompetence,” MSF Director-General Christopher Lockyear said at a press conference on Thursday. It shows that these measures are futile in a war where there is no war.”
“It is a political choice that allows these attacks on humanitarian workers,” Lockyear said. “Israel will face no political costs.”
traces of attack
NBC News has learned of at least two incidents in which World Central Kitchen employees were shot. On March 30, just two days before the deadly convoy attack that killed seven WCK workers, aid groups say an Israeli sniper fired into one of their vehicles, damaging its side mirror. He said he thought so. WCK said no one was injured and the incident had been reported to the IDF.
A week ago, on March 23, a convoy carrying WCK food, part of the first shipments received from the sea in the charity's maritime humanitarian mission, was at the center of chaos at the Kuwait Rotary in Gaza City. . Witnesses told NBC News reporters at the scene that Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian civilians who had gathered waiting for help.
The Gaza government's media office said 19 people were killed in the incident, blaming Israeli forces who opened fire with tanks and machine guns.
In footage shot by NBC News, bloody bodies can be seen strewn inside cardboard boxes labeled “World Central Kitchen.” The injured man was lying on top of a yellow and green paella pan and a plastic tarpaulin printed with the WCK logo.
In both incidents, the group communicated its movements to COGAT as part of standard collision avoidance procedures, WCK said.
NBC News reached out to the IDF on Friday for comment on the incident mentioned by WCK and six other incidents involving aid workers detailed in this article, but received no response regarding any of the incidents. Not obtained. In previous attacks on aid convoys, including at the roundabout in Kuwait and Al Nabulsi, the IDF has cited self-defense and the need to disperse crowds as reasons for firing.
IRC's Donnelly said in an interview with NBC News that the IRC notifies the Israeli military of its fixed positions and planned movements through COGAT. Nevertheless, on January 18, a bomb exploded just meters from an IRC facility in Almawasi, a town on the outskirts of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, injuring several IRC personnel, he said.
A United Nations assessment reviewed by NBC News concluded that the explosive used was likely an MK83 1,000-pound guided bomb, a U.S.-made munition.
The IRC has received six comments from the IDF about what happened, from initially denying involvement to admitting they were attempting to attack nearby targets to blaming a defect in the bomb's tail. He said he received different explanations.
Donnelly said the IRC specifically selected this compound to avoid risks. It was located in an area several hundred yards from the nearest buildings and was built on sandy soil, making it an unsuitable location for tunneling and a target for Israeli Defense Force attacks seeking to bomb Hamas's tunnel infrastructure. It was unlikely that it would.
Donnelly said there are only two really plausible explanations for why the IDF has not been able to effectively resolve the conflict in Gaza.
“One is a complete breakdown of command and control,” he said. “And the other thing is the disregard for collision avoidance systems and the intentionality behind the attack.”
Another aid group, American Near East Refugee Assistance (Anera), was among those that suspended operations in Gaza on Tuesday, citing risks to the safety of its staff.
On March 8, one of the staff members, Moussa Shawa, was killed in an airstrike while evacuating with his family in a known location in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
Anera said in a statement that Shawa, a logistics coordinator, had just returned to the evacuation center after delivering relief supplies when he was killed. “Days before the attack, even though the coordinates of his shelter had been provided several times with the aim of protecting him.”
Anera President and CEO Sean Carroll told NBC News he hopes to believe the attack on Showa was unintentional.
“There's nothing to indicate he was targeted, but they had the coordinates of the shelter and the bomb killed him and went straight into the living room.”
Showa's six-year-old son, Karim, was also injured and later died from his injuries.
Anera said it also coordinated through COGAT, calling the death “an undeniable case of collision avoidance failing” and calling for an independent investigation. The group told NBC it had not received any explanation from the Israeli military about the attack.
The medical relief organization MSF, which has had several of its staff killed in military attacks, has reported several incidents in which its positions were targeted, despite notifying the IDF.
On February 20, an Israeli tank opened fire on a house in Al Mawashi where MSF colleagues and their families were taking shelter, killing two people, the group said.
A month earlier, on January 9, MSF announced that an MSF worker's five-year-old daughter had been killed in what appeared to be a tank shell at another shelter in Khan Yunis.
Then, on November 18, the group reported that Israeli military forces It was announced that he had been targeted by a sniper. Two people died in the incident.
In each case, MSF said it informed the IDF of its movements and location and reported the incident through COGAT. We have not received a response or explanation for the attack.
Project HOPE, Save the Children, and Humanity and Inclusion also had staff killed in the war. UNRWA primarily employs Palestinian staff and accounted for the majority of the 224 aid worker deaths.
In a statement issued after the release of the IDF report, WCK said it could not trust the Israeli military to be held accountable for its actions. “The Israel Defense Forces are unable to credibly investigate their own failures in Gaza,” the ministry said.
“However, it is also clear from the preliminary investigation that the Israel Defense Forces deployed deadly force without regard to its own procedures, chain of command, or rules of engagement.” The IDF's own video shows no reason for firing on our personnel convoy, which was not loaded with weapons and posed no threat.”
“Without regime change, there will be more military failures, more apologies and more families left to grieve,” the statement said.
