Katrina Sriranpong contributes to the New Arab regarding Israel's disregard for international humanitarian law.

1. Gaza is the most lethal place in the
world to be an aid worker
In the past six months, Israel has killed over 200 humanitarian aid workers, despite
deconfliction measures. So are Israel's attacks intentional?
Yousra Samir Imran
23 April, 2024
The Israeli army’s attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid
workers early this month is just one in a series of Israeli attacks on
humanitarian aid workers.
The World Central Kitchen aid workers had just overseen the delivery of 100
tonnes of food aid to their warehouse in Deir El Balah, when Israeli airstrikes
targeted the three cars they were travelling in on April 1.
The pattern in which they were killed – car by car – has made many believe
that it was a targeted attack, including World Central Kitchen’s founder, chef
Jose Andres.
"This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in
the wrong place," Andres said. "Even if we were not in coordination with the
(Israel army), no democratic country and no military can be targeting civilians
and humanitarians."
No humanitarian work under a foreign aid agency takes place in Gaza without
a careful deconfliction plan being put in place first, which involves
coordinating with the Israeli army and gaining their approval.
A plan is sent to COGAT, an Israeli defence agency, who then shares it with the
Israeli army. Aid workers can communicate with the Israeli army in real-time as
they carry out their work, and they carry GPS transmitters with them so that
the Israeli army constantly knows their location.

2. Because of the meticulous manner in which foreign aid agencies plan their
missions and constantly update the Israeli army with their whereabouts, this
has resulted in many doubting that such attacks on humanitarian aid workers
are ‘accidental’ or due to ‘errors.’
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said the killing of the international
charity workers highlighted that Gaza is the "most lethal place in the world to
be an aid worker".
In the past six months, 203 humanitarian aid workers have been killed by the
Israeli army, 95% of whom are Palestinian.
This does not take into account the hundreds of Palestinian doctors, medical
workers, paramedics, ambulance drivers and rescue workers who also carry
out humanitarian work.
A graph released by the Aid Worker Security Database at the end of March
2024 shows that the number of aid workers killed in Gaza in the last six
months is more than the total number of aid workers killed per year in the
past 30 years.
According to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Secretary General Christopher
Lockyear, the growing number of humanitarian aid workers killed in Gaza
suggests that the current deconfliction measures are useless, or that the
attacks are intentional.
In a statement given at a press conference on April 4 2024, Lockyear said,
“Since the beginning of this war, nearly 200 humanitarian workers have been
killed, including five MSF staff. Many of these humanitarians were killed while
providing care for patients or sheltering with their families. We have been
saying it for weeks now. This pattern of attacks is either intentional or
indicative of reckless incompetence.
“It not only shows the failure of deconfliction measures, it shows the futility of
these measures in a war fought with no rules, that these attacks on
humanitarian workers are allowed to happen is a political choice. Israel faces
no political cost…The number of aid workers killed in Gaza is extraordinary, yet

3. it is but a fraction of the total number of people killed so far: now, nearly
33,000 men, women, and children.”
Of the 203 humanitarian aid workers that have been killed, 178 of them are
UN workers. UNRWA spokesman Jonathan Fowler told The New Arab that in
the entire history of the United Nations, this war on Gaza has been the
deadliest war for their aid workers.
“We’ve had a litany of strikes impact on our facilities and people have died in
displacement and died in their homes as well. Our warehouse was hit in Rafah
in March. Other UN agencies that have lost staff as well are the World Health
Organization and the World Food Programme," Fowler said.
"The Palestine Red Crescent has also lost people, for some it's been in their
homes, for others it's been when they've been doing their work, for example,
while driving an ambulance. The World Central Kitchen is the latest in a series
of incidents of various kinds, just one of the most high-profile ones, but it was
an indication of a pattern of failure of deconfliction and that surely is a
problem.”
Before the attack that killed World Central Kitchen’s aid workers, similar
incidents include a sniper attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières’ convoy in
November 2023, which was travelling on a deconflicted route in northern
Gaza.
There was a near-fatal airstrike in January 2024 on the residential compound
that was housing Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) workers and the
International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s Emergency Medical Team workers,
along with local workers and their families.
As of April 4 2024, IRC says the Israeli Government has still not carried out an
investigation into this attack or given a credible explanation.
In February the Israeli army directly hit one of UNRWA’s food aid convoys with
naval gunfire. Spokesman Jonathan Fowler told The New Arab that it was
nothing short of a miracle that no one died in that attack. He stressed that as

4. normal the deconfliction process had been carried out first and the Israeli
army had their coordinates.
With regards to the attack on their warehouse in Rafah in March, he says,
“That was on a static building, the coordinates of which are known and is a UN
facility and a staff member died in that in the incident and then another one
passed away from injuries later. Those kinds of things should not happen, sites
under the UN flag should be protected, that's what international humanitarian
law says.”
Canada-based human rights advocate, lawyer and activism leader for Amnesty
International Canada Katrina Sriranpong, explains that the Israeli army’s failure
to distinguish between military objects and civilian objects and its disregard
for the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks is in direct violation of
international humanitarian law.
“International humanitarian law requires the parties to abide by the principle
of distinction, where they must ensure targets are military and not civilian.
Attacks on civilians such as doctors, humanitarian aid workers, journalists and
children as well as civilian objects are considered war crimes,” she adds.
According to Gazan social and political researcher and author of Trust in
Divided Societies, Abdalhadi Alijla, Israel has a long history of killing
humanitarian aid workers which did not start with the current war on Gaza.
“Almost in every war against the Gaza Strip in the last 20 years, Israel has
targeted UN aid workers, the Palestinian Civil Defence, ambulances and health
workers, so it’s not the first time,” he explains to The New Arab.
“It also has a history of targeting the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon); just last month they targeted the United Nations Peacekeeping in
Southern Lebanon.”
For Gazans like Alijla, Western media’s uproar over the killing of the World
Central Kitchen’s aid workers, which included British, American, Canadian and
Australian citizens, has proven something that they have been arguing since
October 2023 – that there is a hierarchy of death.

5. They are equally devastated by the deaths of the seven aid workers, which
included 25-year-old Palestinian driver Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha but
have highlighted the sudden shift in the narrative in the Western media’s
coverage of Gaza since some of the West’s ‘own’ people were killed by the
Israeli army.
“I see it as pure racism and differentiation between the lives of Palestinians
and the lives of other people,” says Alijla. “It is not only sad and traumatic, but
it also reveals and uncovers the real face of the international community, i.e.
the Western world, that they are differentiating between the blood of white
foreign people and that of the Palestinian people.”
The April attack on the World Central Kitchen aid workers has caused all
international humanitarian agencies operating in Gaza to question the current
deconfliction process.
For agencies like the World Central Kitchen and American Near East Refugee
Aid (anera), it has resulted in them ceasing their operations in Gaza. UNRWA
spokesman Jonathan Fowler says it is a horrible decision to have to make, but
if humanitarian agencies cannot guarantee the safety of their aid workers, they
must pause operations or they risk putting more of their aid workers’ lives on
the line. After all, in order to be able to continue doing the work they do, they
need their staff to be alive.
“There will be constant situational assessments to see whether it's possible to
resume in certain areas, partially resume operations. A blanket halt is never
something that any of us want to do because that leaves people who are
already desperate in an even more desperate situation when you consider
there are over a million people staring famine in the face in the Gaza Strip,” he
explains.
“We do not want to find ourselves in this kind of situation. We may have to do
temporary pauses in some locations, but the ability to operate of course is
severely constrained," he continues.
"We are not able to do the kind of job that we need to do at scale to meet the
needs of the population, which is precisely why everybody's been ringing the

6. alarm bells for months about tipping into a famine, and this would be the
largest, fastest onset famine for many decades, just the number of people, but
also the speed of it coming in, and it's entirely man-made.”
International humanitarian agencies are united in calling on the Israeli
government to ensure that measures are put in place to stop the killing of aid
workers and for the deconfliction process to mean something.
Médecins Sans Frontières called the current deconfliction process ‘blatantly
unreliable.’
“There must not be repeats of this, there must be an understanding of why
these things happen, what can be done to make sure that they do not happen
again,” says UNRWA spokesman Jonathan Fowler.
“We do everything to coordinate our movements. In any war situation, there's
always going to be that element of risk, it's not a risk-free operating
environment, but we need to we need to calculate risk to the minimum level.
We don't move without permission, so we have to ensure that those
permissions actually mean something.”
For now, UNRWA, Médecins Sans Frontières, Medical Aid for Palestinians and
the International Rescue Committee have decided to continue to operate in
Gaza, working alongside Palestinian medical workers, health workers and
rescue workers, all the while knowing that their lives are just as fragile as their
Palestinian counterparts.
Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in
Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by
Hashtag Press