The non-governmental organization World Central Kitchen (WCK), founded by Spanish-American celebrity chef José Andrés, has announced that it will suspend its aid operations in Rafah, Gaza, due to continued Israeli attacks on the area.
“Israeli military operations in Rafah have forced countless families to flee again,” the charity said on social media platform X late on Tuesday.
“Due to the ongoing attacks, we have been forced to suspend operations at our main kitchen in Rafah and relocate many of our community kitchens further north.”
The charity recently resumed operations in Gaza after suspending its activities in April after three Israeli drone strikes killed seven of its staff members.
The deaths of one Australian, three Britons, one North American, one Palestinian and one Polish national sparked global outrage over the Israeli attack.
An internal Israeli military investigation found that the drone team made an “operational misjudgment,” an excuse the IDF often uses to avoid responsibility.
Israeli attacks on Rafah have intensified in recent weeks since the IDF seized the Gaza-Egypt checkpoint on May 7 and launched a ground offensive there.
Gaza authorities said Israeli forces attacked a crowded displaced persons camp in Rafah on Sunday, killing 45 people and wounding dozens.
The Israeli military, which has attacked hospitals, aid distribution centers, UN facilities, places of worship and all kinds of civilian infrastructure over the past eight months, said it had “opened an investigation” into the latest attack but insisted there was “no way” military weapons alone could have caused the deadly blaze.
Aid agencies say it has become difficult to deliver aid to Gaza since the Rafah offensive began.
Rick Pieperkorn, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) representative to the Palestinian territories, told AFP on Tuesday that even if medical supplies and other aid arrive in Gaza, transporting and delivering them to both the south and north remains “extremely challenging”.
Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that Israel has frequently attacked locations known to be aid workers in the Gaza Strip, despite providing them with information on their locations to ensure their protection.
Rights monitors said they had verified eight incidents in which aid convoys and facilities were targeted, killing at least 15 people, including two children.
They are among more than 250 aid workers killed in Gaza since war broke out more than seven months ago, according to UN figures.
In all eight cases, the organisations provided coordinates to Israeli authorities, HRW said.
This exposes “fundamental flaws in the so-called deconfliction system, which is intended to protect aid workers and enable the safe delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance in Gaza,” the report said.
Relentless Israeli bombardment and ground attacks on Gaza have killed at least 35,173 people, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The war and siege have caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with the United Nations repeatedly lamenting aid restrictions even as famine looms in the north.
“again and again”
“On the one hand, Israel is blocking access to vital life-saving humanitarian supplies, and on the other, it is attacking convoys transporting some of the small amount of supplies it does allow into the country,” Belkis Wille, deputy director of crises, conflict, and weapons at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Tuesday.
HRW cited the case of the US-based charity World Central Kitchen, which was hit by an Israeli military attack on its convoy on April 1, killing seven aid workers.
This was not an isolated “mistake,” HRW said, pointing to seven other cases it had identified in which GPS coordinates of aid convoys or facilities had been sent to Israeli authorities only to be attacked by Israeli forces “without warning.”
“Israel's allies need to recognise that these attacks killing aid workers have happened time and time again and to stop them,” Wille said.
Of the seven other attacks listed, three were against convoys and facilities for Doctors Without Borders and two against convoys and facilities for UNRWA, the United Nations agency that provides assistance to Palestinian refugees.
All organisations that witnessed damaged buildings or personnel told HRW that to their knowledge “there were no military targets in the area at the time of the attack”.
“If confirmed, the attack would constitute an unlawful indiscriminate attack, or an unlawful attack that failed to take sufficient precautions to ensure that the target was a military facility,” HRW said.
On Monday, a UN staff vehicle was attacked in the Rafah area in the southern Gaza Strip, killing one staff member and wounding another. The UN said it had given Israeli authorities clear advance notice of the vehicle's movements.
