Gaza Aid Contractor tells BBC that he saw colleagues shoot at hungry Palestinians

A former security contractor for Gaza’s controversial new Israel and the US supported by the US has told the BBC that he had witnessed colleagues who opened the fire several times on hungry Palestinians who had not formed a threat, also with machinery.

On an occasion, he said, a guard had opened the fire of a watchtower with a machine gun because a group of women, children and the elderly left the site too slowly.

When asked to respond, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said that the allegations were categorically incorrect.

She referred us to a statement stating that no citizens ever came under fire on the GHF distribution sites.

The GHF started its activities in Gaza at the end of May and distributed limited help from various locations in the south of and Central Gaza. That followed on a total blockade of Gaza of 11 weeks by Israel in which no food entered the territory.

The system has been criticized on a large scale because the enormous number of people forced to walk to a handful of sites through active combat zones. Since the GHF started, the Israeli troops have killed more than 400 Palestinians who try to get food aid from his locations, say the UN and local doctors. Israel says that the new distribution system is stopping help that goes to Hamas.

Continuation of his description of the incident at one of the GHF locations – in which he said that guards shot in a group of Palestinians – the former contractor said: “As it happened, another contractor opened on location, standing on the roadside with a view of the exit, open with 15 to 20 shots of repetitive weapons.

“A Palestinian man fell immobile on the floor. And then the other contractor who stood there was as if:” Damn, I think you have one. “And then they laughed about it.”

The contractor, who spoke with us on condition of anonymity, said that GHF managers had deposited his report as a coincidence, which suggests that the Palestinian man “stumbled” or “tired and fainting” could have been.

The GHF claimed that the man who made these allegations is a “dissatisfied former contractor” that they had ended for misconduct, which he denies. He showed us pays slips that suggested that he was paid two weeks after leaving the mail.

The man we spoke with, who said he had worked on all four GHF distribution sites, described a culture of impunity with few rules or checks.

He said that contractors did not receive clear rules of involvement or standard operational procedures and were told by a team leader: “If you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later”.

The culture in the company, he said, felt: “We are going to Gaza, so they are not rules. Do what you want.”

“If a Palestinian runs away from the site and does not demonstrate hostile intention, and we are shooting warning shots on them, anyway, we are wrong, we are criminally negligent,” he told me.

He told us that every site had CCTV monitored the activity in the area, and GHF insists that no one was wounded or shot there “an absolute lie with a bare face”.

GHF said that rifle fire belonged in images that were shared with the BBC came from Israeli troops.

Team leaders referred to Gazanen such as “Zombie orders,” said the former contractor, “insinuating that these people have no value.”

The man also said that Palestinians cause damage to GHF locations in other ways, for example by being touched by debris of stun grenades, being sprayed with club or by being pushed into razor wire.

He said he had witnessed different occasions in which Palestinians seemed to have been seriously injured, including a man who had a full can of pepper spray in his face, and a woman he said it was hit with the metal part of a stun grenade, wrongly shots in a crowd.

“This metal piece hit her immediately and she fell to the floor, not moving,” he said. “I don’t know if she was dead. I am sure she was unconscious and completely weak.”

Earlier this week more than 170 charities and other NGOs cried that the GHF is closed. The organizations, including Oxfam and the children save, say Israeli troops and armed groups of “routine” open fire on Palestinians who seek help.

Israel denies that his soldiers deliberately shoot at recipients of AID and says that the GHF system offers direct help to people who need it, causing Hamas interference to be bypassed.

The GHF says that it had delivered more than 52 million meals in five weeks and that other organizations are “helplessly being looted with their help”.

The Israeli army launched a campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were held hostage.

Since then, at least 57.130 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-Runned Health Minister of the Territory.

Additional reporting by Gidi Kleiman and Samantha Granville