Flour massacres in Gaza... Why is Israel killing civilians in aid lines?

In one of the most brutal scenes in the history of war and siege, lines of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip are being targeted as they wait for a bag of flour or a food basket. The shooting isn't directed at fighters, it's at the hungry. From Rashid Street to the Netzarim Junction, the massacres are repeated without restraint. This report analyzes the political, military, and ideological backgrounds behind this systematic targeting, revealing how aid has transformed from a lifeline into a mass killing ground, amid international silence and open complicity.
In besieged Gaza, war is no longer fought solely with artillery and missiles. It is also waged through starvation, which is now evolving into a deadly weapon in its own right, with dozens of Palestinians killed daily while waiting for bags of flour or aid boxes.

Massacres at aid centers
According to government media in Gaza, more than 516 civilians have been killed while waiting for aid or during aid distribution gatherings since the so-called "US-Israeli aid" mechanism began on May 27, 2025. More than 3,700 others have been injured, with horrific scenes recurring: bodies piled up in front of hospitals, and survivors screaming, "We only came out for food."
Since October 2023, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to one of the harshest sieges and mass starvation campaigns in modern times, according to Amnesty International. The organization issued a statement on March 12, 2024, stating: "Israel is systematically using starvation as a weapon of war, a serious violation of international humanitarian law and a documented war crime."
For his part, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, stated in his address to the Human Rights Council: "What we are witnessing in Gaza is the systematic destruction of the most basic necessities of life and the forced starvation of civilians. Shooting at starving people is horrific and unjustifiable under any circumstances."

Fire-controlled distribution points
Since late May 2025, the so-called "US-Israeli aid mechanism" has been in operation. It relies on specific land distribution points within the Gaza Strip, rather than airdrops as in the first weeks of the war.
These points, such as the Rashid Street intersection, the Netzarim area, and western Rafah, are designated in coordination with the Israeli military and promoted as "humanitarian corridors," but they are completely subject to the occupation forces' fire control.
In many cases, as soon as aid seekers gather near these sites, they turn into exposed ambushes, with dozens killed or wounded by direct gunfire or surprise bombing, thus undermining the claim that these sites offer humanitarian protection.

Why does Israel target aid recipients?
Observers believe that targeting aid convoys serves Israel's military and psychological purposes, most notably: terrorizing the population, preventing gatherings, humiliating people, making their survival conditional on accepting the occupation's terms, dismantling internal solidarity, and turning food into a tool of control.
"When people are killed while running after a flour truck, this is not a case of chaos, but rather a systematic policy that seeks to humiliate the Palestinian people and erase their dignity," international law scholar Michael Lynk, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, said in an interview with Al Jazeera English.
In summary, it can be said that Israel is targeting aid-seekers in Gaza with such brutality for several intertwined reasons, related to military policy, the way the war is being conducted, and the goal of pressuring Palestinian society. These reasons can be summarized as follows:

1- Starvation as a weapon of war
Israel is using a policy of siege and starvation to subjugate the population of Gaza. It is using the targeting of aid distribution centers as a means of controlling and taming Palestinian society through economic and psychological pressure, in an attempt to force the population to submit or flee.

2- Security justifications and claims of a threat
The Israeli military sometimes justifies shooting civilians at aid centers by claiming a "security threat" or the presence of "militants" among the crowds. However, field testimonies and human rights reports confirm that most of the victims are unarmed civilians, and that militants are not present in such gatherings.
In some cases, the military declared roads leading to aid centers "combat zones," warning civilians to stay away from them, even though it knew most of those there were food seekers.

3- The policy of collective punishment and impunity
The continuation of these crimes reflects a policy of collective punishment against the population of Gaza, benefiting from international immunity and political and military support from the United States and other Western countries, which gives it a sense of impunity.
Human rights organizations assert that the heavy, deliberate firing on civilians attempting to obtain aid is unjustified under both law and humanitarian law and constitutes a documented war crime.

4- Broader political goals
Some believe that targeting aid recipients also aims to undermine international relief efforts, force residents to flee, or alter the demographic landscape in the Gaza Strip, in addition to exerting political and military pressure on the Palestinian resistance.
The brutal targeting of aid workers in Gaza reflects a deliberate strategy to subjugate the population through starvation and murder. Israel justifies this with flimsy security claims, while facts and testimonies confirm that the goal is collective pressure and control, in the absence of any effective international deterrent.
The Hebrew newspaper Haaretz published an extensive investigation on June 10, noting that instructions issued by the army command allow "opening fire in the vicinity of assembly points if unruly elements or potential threats are suspected." Military experts described this as a green light for indiscriminate fire.
Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, claiming the movement seeks to create bloody humanitarian scenes to embarrass Israel before international public opinion. However, the fundamental problem with these justifications is that they do not hold up against the systematic repetition of the same incident in different areas, under international supervision, and in front of camera lenses.

Documented testimonies: "There was no clash."
For its part, Human Rights Watch stated in its report issued on June 5: "Many of the killings at aid distribution sites did not involve any armed clashes. Civilians were shot as they ran toward food trucks or gathered in the squares, some while trying to return with their food."
In a documented testimony provided by Dr. Thaer Ahmed, an American emergency physician volunteering with MedGlobal who worked at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis during January and February 2024, he confirmed that the nature of the injuries arriving at the hospital indicated a systematic pattern of targeting.
In an interview with British media, he said, "Many of the injuries were caused by precision shots to the head and chest, and others by drones that even targeted medical personnel." He added that these wounds were not the result of indiscriminate shelling or clashes, but rather "more like deliberate sniper attacks on civilian bodies at deadly weak points."
Although he did not specifically refer to aid queues, his testimony reveals a calculated policy of firing at civilians, consistent with the pattern seen at food distribution sites in Gaza today.

starvation ideology
There may not be an explicit religious edict in the Jewish faith justifying the killing of the starving, but in the ideological structure of the Hebrew state, the Palestinian—even in moments of hunger—is constituted as a dangerous element or an existential surplus that must be neutralized. In biblical literature, much of which is recycled in ultra-nationalist discourse, models of starving "enemy" peoples appear as a means of divine purification, and are sometimes reinterpreted by extremist rabbis to justify collective punishment.
Rabbi Dov Lior said explicitly: “In war, there is no difference between a civilian and a combatant, because they all constitute a hostile environment.”
This vision intersects with the Israeli military doctrine known as the "Dahiya Doctrine," which treats the entire community as a battlefield, making food lines legitimate targets in the rigid security mindset.
In political discourse, derogatory descriptions of Palestinians, such as "rats" or "human animals," have become common. This deepens their dehumanization and provides the killer with a convenient psychological justification. Thus, in the Israeli security imagination, the hungry Palestinian is transformed into a demographic bomb waiting to be extinguished, rather than a human being to be saved.
Analysts believe that Israel's deeper goal in killing the starving is to fracture society and dismantle the civil fabric. Moreover, the killing of civilians in aid lines is not only a physical massacre, but also a moral and psychological assassination of Palestinian society, stripping it of its dignity and survival, and pushing it toward complete collapse, as a prelude to changing the demographic, geographic, and political reality in Gaza.
These analysts assert that Israel is killing these people because it wants to impose its will by force on a besieged society. It understands that food, like a weapon, can be used to dismantle or humiliate an opponent. It is a war against the very idea of the Palestinian human being and against their very survival.

The duality of the Western narrative
Although some Western leaders have expressed concern about the "humanitarian toll," many governments continue to support the aid distribution mechanism coordinated with Israel, raising a moral question: Is the West complicit—through silence or support—in the crime of starving and killing civilians?
"Food provided under the conditions of occupation has become a symbol of the collapse of the global moral order, and Israel is exploiting this collapse to impose conditions of collective surrender," says Elisabeth Brosset, a researcher at the Geneva Institute of International Studies.


international legal
Under international humanitarian law, deliberate attacks on civilians, particularly those seeking essential humanitarian assistance, constitute war crimes. The protection of civilians is a fundamental principle of international law, and parties to a conflict have clear obligations to avoid targeting them and facilitate the delivery of aid. The use of starvation as a weapon of war, as many international organizations have pointed out regarding the situation in Gaza, is a serious violation of numerous international treaties and agreements, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Targeting civilian gatherings in aid queues, regardless of security pretexts, is a flagrant violation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution, pillars of international law aimed at protecting innocent lives in times of conflict.
In conclusion, Gaza today is living in a state where a bag of flour has become a life-threatening threat. Palestinian civilians in the Strip today are not dying merely from bombing or siege, but for a piece of bread. The question facing the world's conscience is: Will we continue counting bodies, or will we stop the killing?

Source: Al Jazeera