The Daily - A Deadly Aid Delivery and Growing Threat of Famine in Gaza

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Late last week, an effort to get food into northern Gaza turned deadly, as thousands of desperate Gazans descended on aid trucks, and Israeli troops tasked with guarding those trucks opened fire.Exactly how people died, and who was responsible, remains contested. Hiba Yazbek, a reporter-researcher in Jerusalem for The Times, explains what we know about what happened and what it tells us about hunger in Gaza.Guest: Hiba Yazbek, a reporter-researcher in Jerusalem for The New York Times.Background reading: Palestinian and Israeli officials offered differing accounts of a deadly scene in northern Gaza, in which local health officials said more than 100 people were killed.Delivering supplies into Gaza, especially the north, has taken on increased urgency as the United Nations has warned that many Gazans are on the edge of famine.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Late last week, an effort to get food into northern Gaza turned deadly, as thousands of desperate Gazans descended on aid trucks, and Israeli troops tasked with guarding those trucks opened fire. But exactly how people died and who was responsible remains contested. Today, my colleague Hiba Yazbek on what we know about what happened and what it tells us about hunger in Gaza.

It's Tuesday, March 5th. So, Hiba, we are now in the fifth month of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. And for weeks, we've been hearing about negotiations over a ceasefire and a hostage exchange. And then, late last week, there was a disaster surrounding an aid convoy that was brought into Gaza. You've been reporting on what happened. Tell us about it. So last Thursday, there was a deadly disaster involving civilians, possibly the deadliest disaster since the war started nearly five months ago, in which 118 Palestinians were killed and more than 760 were wounded in Gaza City. what exactly happened. The Israeli military has one account of what happened and the Gaza health ministry and witnesses have another account. So my colleagues and I started digging

into the details. We started calling people, piecing together a picture of what had actually happened there. And what did you find when you guys started really looking into this? And what did you find when you guys started really looking into this? So first, let me just give you the context of what happened. This happened in northern Gaza, the place that has been at war the longest. That's where Israeli ground forces began their invasion of the Gaza Strip. Many people have left the north, but we do know that some 300,000 people are still there. And the people who have remained there are really living through very desperate conditions. Very little aid has come in to the north of Gaza since the war started, and especially in recent weeks. And food is barely

available for the people who've remained there. And the UN has been warning of a famine that is looming over the territory. And Heba, why is there so little aid getting into northern Gaza in particular? Well, first of all, there's less aid getting into the Gaza Strip in general, not just the north. There's multiple reasons as to why that is, but one of the main reasons is that Israel itself has been very slow to approve permits and often denies permits for aid trucks and aid convoys to come in, specifically to the north, because Israel says that they don't want the aid to end up in the hands of Hamas, that they don't want them to get a hold of the packages.

Got it. And when Israel does approve the permits and the aid trucks start their journeys, there's multiple hurdles that they have to go through in order to actually deliver it to the people. Some of these hurdles include the widespread destruction in Gaza. There's vast damage across the Gaza Strip. Roads have been destroyed. There's rubble everywhere. And it's very difficult for the trucks to actually move through that rubble and through those roads. And then these aid convoys have to go through multiple Israeli checkpoints on the way.

And there's often significant delays at these checkpoints by Israeli soldiers who are inspecting the aid. This makes it hard for the trucks to make it from where they enter in the south all the way to the north in the specific safety window that they're given. And sometimes they make it halfway through and they turn around because they got delayed so much that they can't keep going. But there's a particular problem with the north where fighting has been going on the longest. The civil order is now breaking down, essentially. We know that frequent Israeli strikes on Palestinian policemen meant that there's really no one to run security for official groups and for aid convoys,

leaving them vulnerable to attacks by local gangs who are trying to steal the aid and sell it or profit off of it. And also hungry and desperate civilians who are trying to grab the aid and take as much as they can, which, you know, means that they end up stealing some of it, looting some of it while it's still on the way. stealing some of it, looting some of it while it's still on the way. Right. So it's like lawlessness and effectively social order breakdown. I mean, this is kind of the downstream effects of extended war in a particular place, right? There's a power vacuum and that situation, you know, can be very difficult for an organization like the United Nations to be able to operate safely.

Right. And the few aid trucks that do come in have had to either suspend their aid deliveries into the north or have not been able to deliver aid there. The last time UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, tried to bring trucks to the north was nearly a month ago. But they said that one of their convoys came under fire. And another major aid provider, the World Food Program, said that they haven't delivered aid there in over three weeks, and they cited all of the reasons we talked about for this suspension. So while aid hasn't been coming into the north, people have been growing more desperate and hungry, and the situation there has been getting worse, which has been raising international alarm. And there's been increased calls on Israel to let aid go through to the north and to alleviate the suffering of the residents there.

air. So Israel partnered with these local Palestinian businessmen in Gaza, and they promised to secure the eight convoys that the businessmen would supply and that would make their way into the north. And they successfully did this three times last week. So people started being very hopeful that more would come. And ahead of the fourth delivery, they started to gather at this distribution point right outside of Gaza City in the north. And that brings us to Thursday's incident. So last Thursday, around 4.45 a.m., around 38 aid trucks reached this distribution point, and they start getting closer to the crowds of people who had camped there overnight, waiting for this aid to come. And when the people see the trucks coming, they're very desperate. They surround them, they get on top of them. And then at some point, Israeli soldiers start firing shots. And then it turned violent very fast. And it ended with 118 Palestinians

dead and 760 injured. And this is where the accounts diverge. Okay, so let's start with the Israeli account. What do they say happened? So the Israeli military said that it was trying to secure the convoy and it had tanks nearby to make sure that the convoy reached the area. And it did acknowledge that its troops had opened fire at the crowd, but they said that they opened fire when a violent crowd or a violent mob approached their troops and endangered their lives. And they said the shots that were fired weren't really the reason why so many people died, but the reason that so many people died was because in the chaos of all of it,

they trampled each other and many had died from suffocation or trampling and also that the trucks had run over some of the people who were trying to run away. Oh, God. So the Israelis don't deny actually shooting, but they say it was more about controlling the crowd kind of as warning shots type thing and that this was not the way people actually died. They say the way people actually died was suffocation or being crushed by the aid trucks themselves. Right. And what did the Gazan health authorities say? So the Gazan health authorities have actually been calling this the flower massacre or the

massacre of the hungry stomachs, because what they're saying is that Israeli forces fired at a crowd of hungry and desperate people who are waiting for aid. at a crowd of hungry and desperate people who are waiting for aid. And witnesses and Palestinians who were there have said that although some people were trampled and possibly run over by the trucks, that was not the main reason for the high death toll. Most of the people who were injured or killed were injured and killed by Israeli fire. or killed were injured and killed by Israeli fire. So the Gazan health authorities are essentially saying this was a massacre by Israel. Right.

Do we know, Heba, what actually did happen? What have you guys found in your reporting? Well, the Israeli military released drone footage that it claimed showed a mass stampede in which Gazans are trampled, but that video only added to the confusion of the sequence of events, and the quality and the lengths of the clips made it more difficult to confirm these claims. Right, it was just grainy, there was no sound, you saw people scramble and run, but you didn't understand why. You saw people scramble and run, but you didn't understand why. Right. The drone footage was heavily edited and it left out key moments, but it did show hundreds of people circling around the trucks and hoping to catch a bag of flour.

And then suddenly we see people start to panic and run in multiple directions. And then they released another clip in which we see two Israeli tanks that are positioned about a quarter mile down the road. And then we see about a dozen bodies lying around them. And we see people crawling and ducking for cover. But we did have another video that was released by Al Jazeera. And it showed a crowd near the A convoy. And it also captured the sound of gunfire and showed multiple tracer rounds, which is a special type of ammunition

that helps troops fine-tune their targeting when it's dark. And the tracer rounds originated from the direction of a nearby Israeli military base. So although that did not conclude that the shots came from the direction of the Israeli military, it did add another layer of evidence. So Hib, it sounds like these videos are suggestive but not conclusive. But what did the people you spoke to on the ground say? The eyewitnesses and survivors and doctors you spoke with? Right. We spoke to witnesses and survivors, as well as doctors at the hospitals that have taken in the people who were wounded and killed. And they said that most of the people had died or were wounded by gunshots. had died or were wounded by gunshots. And the doctor who runs one of the four main hospitals in the area that took in the casualties told me that out of the 13 people who were killed and the

170 people who were wounded that the hospital took in, all of the injuries were of gunshot wounds. He said that they didn't see any injuries that coincided with those of a stampede or people being run over by trucks. And that account echoes the ones that we've heard from witnesses and people who were there who saw people get shot and fall to the ground next to them. But in the chaos of everything, people were not checking who's dead and who's wounded. They were just taking the flour and they were running for their lives. And although the accounts differ on both sides, what we do know is that many hungry and desperate people died while trying to get food and secure aid in a place where famine is looming and starvation is rampant. And that's what I spent the last few weeks reporting on. I'm trying to understand how people in the north of Gaza specifically

are surviving with such little food. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So, Hiba, I want to talk about what people are doing to survive in northern Gaza. But before we get to that, what is the big picture on the state of hunger in Gaza? Hunger has reached unprecedented levels in Gaza and specifically in northern Gaza. And we're starting to already see reports of children dying from malnutrition and dehydration. And this week, the health ministry said that 15 children have died from malnutrition and dehydration at just one of northern Gaza's hospitals. Wow, 15 children have actually died? Yes, and we also have the UN and aid organizations saying that one in six children in northern Gaza were acutely malnutritioned and that more than 90% of children under two are facing severe food poverty.

And the UN humanitarian coordinator said that a quarter of all Gazan residents are one step away from famine. And how exactly are people surviving, Hiba? I mean, you're talking to people in northern Gaza. What are they saying? I've been reporting on hunger for weeks, and I've talked to people about what they're doing in order to survive with such little food. And I recently talked to one woman whose experience is very typical in northern Gaza. Her name is Ghada Krayem. She's a 23-year-old woman from the north who stayed in the north and didn't flee. And tell me about Ghada. Ghada is one of 10 kids.

She has six sisters and three brothers. And she's actually Gaza's first female solar power engineer. She's won many awards internationally. And she's also the sole provider for her family. And she's used the money that she won from these grants and competitions to help her family through this war. And with that money, she actually stockpiled a bunch of food in the beginning of the war, expecting the situation to deteriorate. She bought flour and milk and canned food and everything they might need, and they stockpiled it in their home.

And how is it that they're still in northern Gaza? Well, actually, they tried to stay in their home for as long as they possibly could until the ground fighting really basically reached their doorstep. And at one point, early on during Israel's ground invasion of the north, Israeli soldiers came to their building and they forced them out. They asked everyone to leave the building and they detained all of the men and the boys who were later released. And she was forced to leave with nothing. They took nothing with them, like many other Gazans. And they moved. They moved 12 times since.

And they moved. They moved 12 times since. One of those times was to the south, where they got there and they realized that it actually wasn't much safer. It wasn't better for them. So they realized that they should probably just go back to the north and stay as close as possible to their home in case they're able to go back later. But that never happened because Israeli forces took up their home as a military base and they were there for two weeks, she said. And after they'd left two weeks later, she went back to check on her home and it was burnt. There was nothing left, including the food that she'd stockpiled. And now she's sheltering with 50 members of her extended family, including children in a two-bedroom apartment in the north. 50 people in a two-bedroom apartment. That is extraordinary.

So what did they do for food early in the war? Well, she told me that in the beginning of the war, they still were able to find some things to buy and eat, like rice and vegetables. She said that by the end of December, basically, when aid to the north became less frequent and things that they were eating had started to run out, including flour, which became much less available and much more expensive, they didn't know what to do. I mean, they had nothing to eat, so they started mixing water with starch to eat. They were having one meal a day, and the children were constantly hungry, so they had to find an alternative, and that alternative was animal food. So she told me that they started grinding up really any animal food that they could find.

So rabbit food and bird food and hay and fodder, really anything that they could get their hands on. And they would use that to make bread with. But the bread was very dry and it smelled bad, it tasted bad and it made their stomachs hurt. But she said that the one that was the worst for her was the bird food. She said the bird food tasted and smelled as if you were sitting with a bunch of chicken. The smell was very bad and the taste was even worse. But she told me that even though this stuff tasted and smelled bad they really tried to make it as less awful as possible. She told me that one of her cousins sheltering with her loved to bake and she made really tasty sweets before the war.

So basically she tried to make the most out of these ingredients and she was making desserts using the cornmeal and the rabbit food. And she was also making other savory dishes that they liked and they ate frequently before the war. She used the animal feed to make maftoul, which is the Palestinian version of couscous. So she was making it with the ground-up animal feed? Yes, but that was still not enough.

At that point, Ghada and her family were only eating one meal a day, and that was not enough for them or the children in the family. She told me that her little sister, two-year-old Eileen, who's actually the youngest person sheltering with them, was hungry all the time. She was going to sleep crying and waking up crying. And she loved milk, but they ran out of milk more than two months ago. So what they've been doing is basically giving her expired

juice. It was actually not even juice. It's a concentrated juice that they would mix with water and because it was expired, it was making her sick. But that was the only thing that they could give her in place of milk. And when they were able to, they would give her sugar cane that they would find in the market and lemons as a snack. And sometimes when those weren't even available, they would just give her gum to chew on and stop crying to silence her hunger. Stop crying to silence her hunger. So I asked her if they had been able to get any aid since the war started. And she told me that her brother, Mohammed, who's 30 years old, had been going to the distribution site and sleeping on the beach just waiting for aid. He would leave at 7 in the morning and come back at 3 a.m.,

and he slept there for three days last week. So her brother had been sleeping on the beach in hopes that there would be aid dropped off here. So what happened? So after waiting for hours near the distribution site on Thursday, he saw the eight trucks coming and along with the crowd, he ran towards them. And suddenly when the chaos erupted, he just started seeing people dropping to the ground and he's actually deaf and mute. So he didn't know what was happening. He just saw people get shot and fall to the ground in front of him. She told me that he saw someone get shot in the head right next to him. God.

And in the middle of all the chaos and the bloodshed, he was actually able to grab a bag of flour and he just took it and started running really fast. He was just trying to get away and hold on to that bag of flour that he was able to get. And while leaving the site, he saw this little kid who was also able to grab a bag of flour. who had attacked him and grabbed the bag of flour from him. They stole it from him. And Rada's brother just kept running until he got home finally. And he came home after three days of sleeping in the sand with a bag of flour. God, a terrifying night. Mm-hmm.

But that was the first time they've had flour in months, since December, basically. So obviously they wanted to make bread, but that bag was a 25 kilogram bag of flour. And again, there were 50 people sheltering in one apartment. So they had to make it last them as long as possible so it could feed all the members of the family. So they had to make it last them as long as possible so it could feed all the members of the family. So actually what they're doing now is they're mixing the flour with animal feed still. They're doing one cup of flour with three cups of animal feed to stretch it out for as long as possible and they're making bread with it. She said that it was better but still not normal bread. It was not what they were craving.

You know, they've been through so much since the war started. They've seen people killed. They've seen dead bodies. They've been displaced 12 times. They've lost friends and family members. But she said that now with the hunger and the starvation in the north, it's really the worst thing they've gone through since the beginning of the war. She said that she's seeing people, kids who are rummaging through trash, trying to find anything to eat. And so she said that people were still going back to that same distribution site. She even said that more people were going back on the beach and waiting and camping out and sleeping there, hoping for more aid to come.

And she also said that her brother, Mohammed, was also going back every day since Thursday, hoping to get another bag of flour because he was so hungry that he wanted to eat anything and risking his life for a bag of flour was worth it. Despite the fact that so many people had died on Thursday trying to get flour, the fact that some people did had died on Thursday trying to get flour, the fact that some people did come home with a bag of flour, that was enough for them and others to go back there in hopes that more was going to come. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Sabrina. Over the weekend, the Biden administration airdropped food into Gaza for the first time. And Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ceasefire, a position she pressed with a member of Israel's war cabinet, Benny Gantz, at the White House on Monday. Meanwhile, 15 trucks were dispatched to northern Gaza on Monday, but at least five were looted along the way, and it was unclear how many reached their intended destination. We'll be right back. Thank you. rejecting a challenge to Trump's eligibility that had threatened to upend the presidential race. The case arose from a challenge brought by Colorado voters who cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a provision adopted after the Civil War to forbid those who had taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding office if they engaged in insurrection.

support the Constitution from holding office if they engaged in insurrection. The justices agreed that individual states may not bar candidates from the presidency under that constitutional provision. It was a unanimous decision that was largely expected. And a United Nations report released on Monday found, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence, including rape, was committed in at least three locations in Israel during the October 7th attack. The Nova Music Festival site, Road 232, and Kibbutz Reyim. The experts also said they had found circumstantial evidence that could indicate sexual violence had occurred with, that sexual violence, including rape, was inflicted against some women during their time in captivity in Gaza. The report said that the UN team had also heard accounts of sexual violence

against Palestinians that implicated Israeli security forces and settlers. forces and settlers. Today's episode was produced by Sydney Harper, Rochelle Banja, and Lindsay Garrison. It was edited by Liz O'Balin and Lisa Chow. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, and Alicia Bitu, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderling. Thank you.