Notes

The aid paradox. The UN World Food Programme this week accused Israeli forces of opening fire on crowds of Palestinians seeking food from a 25-truck convoy in northern Gaza, with the agency stating that the crowd “came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire.” The incident occurred “despite assurances from Israeli authorities that humanitarian operational conditions would improve; including that armed forces will not be present nor engage at any stage along humanitarian convoy routes.”

WFP warned that “without these fundamental conditions in place, we cannot continue providing life-saving support across the Gaza strip” and described Gaza’s hunger crisis as having "reached new levels of desperation" with "people dying from lack of humanitarian assistance.” The Israeli military has disputed aspects of the incident, with competing claims that could not be independently verified on account of media-access restrictions.

Of course, casualty figures remain contested, too, given the complexities of Hamas’s influence over their reporting. But the deeper question appears to be whether the existing framework for delivering humanitarian aid in active conflict zones has fundamentally broken down—creating a horrible paradox in which aid delivery is essentially endangering the lives of the people it’s meant to save.

What’s at stake here?