Israeli forces at the sites of a new US-backed aid distribution system in Gaza have routinely opened fire on starving Palestinian civilians in acts that amount to serious violations of international law and war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.
Mass casualty incidents have taken place on a near-daily basis at or near the four sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which operates in coordination with the Israeli military. At least 859 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to obtain aid at GHF sites between May 27 and July 31, 2025, most by the Israeli military, according to the United Nations. The dire humanitarian situation is a direct result of Israel's use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war-a war crime -as well as Israel's continued intentional deprivation of aid and basic services, ongoing actions that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination, and acts of genocide.
"Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. "US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths."
States should press Israeli authorities to immediately stop using lethal force as a method of crowd control against Palestinian civilians, lift unlawful sweeping restrictions on the entry of aid, and suspend this flawed distribution system, Human Rights Watch said. Instead, the UN and other humanitarian organizations should be permitted to resume aid distributions across Gaza at scale and without restrictions, as they have proven able to feed the population in line with humanitarian standards and as required by binding rulings by the International Court of Justice in South Africa's genocide case against Israel.
In May, after more than 11 weeks of an Israeli-imposed total blockade on Gaza, the GHF distribution mechanism began operating. The aim of the Israeli authorities was reportedly to ultimately replace humanitarian aid delivery by the UN and other aid organizations.
Israeli authorities justified these moves by claiming Hamas diverted aid, but New York Times reporting, based on Israeli military sources, indicates that the Israeli military does not have evidence that Hamas systematically diverted aid from the UN. The UN-led system remains operational, but is subject to significant restrictions by Israeli authorities, including how much and what type of aid is allowed in and where it can go.
The GHF system is run by two US private subcontracted companies: Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, in coordination with the Israeli military. The companies have said they are "committed only to delivering food to suffering civilians" and are independent of any government, but all four distribution sites are within militarized areas. Three sites are in Rafah, which Israeli authorities have largely razed to the ground and where they have proposed to concentrate Gaza's population. One is in the ethnically cleansed Israeli security zone known as the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts Gaza in half. None of the sites are accessible to people in northern Gaza, who are instead reliant on the UN-led distribution system.
In July, Human Rights Watch interviewed 10 people who were on the ground in Gaza in recent months and witnessed violence at or near aid sites, or who treated those injured and killed at the sites. Those interviewed included Anthony Bailey Aguilar, a retired US Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel, who worked in Gaza as a security contractor for UG Solutions, including in the control centers and at dozens of distributions at all four distribution sites between May and June; a foreign humanitarian worker who worked in Gaza in June; two foreign doctors who worked in Gaza in May, June, and July and treated civilians who were injured at or near GHF aid distribution sites; and six Palestinian witnesses to violent incidents related to the distributions. Researchers also analyzed satellite imagery at different spatial resolutions, verified videos and photographs including content taken by Aguilar, analyzed document metadata, and reviewed social media posts by GHF.
Human Rights Watch sent letters to GHF, SRS, UG Solutions, the Israeli military, and the US government on July 19 with a summary of findings and list of questions. The Israeli military, UG Solutions, counsel for UG Solutions, and counsel for GHF/SRS responded and their overall responses are reflected below.
The four GHF distribution sites were selected and constructed by the Israeli military, counsel for GHF said to Human Rights Watch. Through satellite imagery, researchers confirmed that the sites are in militarized zones, surrounded by military outposts. Counsel for GHF said it hired SRS to run the distribution sites, which in turn hired UG Solutions to provide security at the sites.
Rather than delivering food to people at hundreds of accessible sites throughout Gaza, the new mechanism requires Palestinians to trek across dangerous and destroyed terrain. According to five witnesses, Israeli forces control the movement of Palestinians to the sites through the use of live ammunition. Inside the sites, the distribution of aid itself is an uncontrolled "free-for-all," as Aguilar described it, that often leaves the most vulnerable and weakest people with nothing. Human Rights Watch analyzed announcements made on GHF's Facebook page of 105 distributions across the 4 sites and found that 54 distribution windows were under 20 minutes long and 20 distributions were announced as finished before their official opening time had begun.
One Palestinian man told Human Rights Watch that he left his home at about 9 p.m., trying to reach a site that was due to open at 9 a.m. the next day. On the way, he said, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and others as they were walking towards the site: "If you stopped walking, or did anything they didn't want, they fired at you." In a separate incident, Aguilar said he witnessed an Israeli tank fire on a civilian vehicle just outside Site 4, which he believed killed four people inside, on June 8. Another contractor who spoke to ITV News described the same attack on the car.
Another Palestinian man who went to one of the aid sites described the difficult and risky journey: "So many people who need aid are not getting it because they are not able to make it all the way there. Those who do go are taking their luck into their own hands, and it's remarkable if they come back alive."
According to seven witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Israeli forces regularly fired on civilians. Three Palestinian witnesses and Aguilar also claimed they witnessed armed guards within the GHF sites using live fire and other weapons against civilians during aid distributions. These armed guards would apparently be UG Solutions contractors, given that the letter from the counsel of GHF and SRS confirmed that the only contractors with weapons inside the distribution sites are from UG Solutions. GHF, SRS, and UG Solutions have denied the allegations that their contractors used force against civilians and stated that UG Solutions personnel only use deadly force as a last resort and have never harmed civilians or aid seekers.
The aid mechanism has failed to address mass starvation in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said. Counsel for GHF said they have delivered 95 million meals in Gaza, as of July 28. However, even at full capacity at the four sites, the GHF scheme is only capable of providing about 60 trucks of food per day, according to Aguilar, as compared to the 600 trucks per day that entered Gaza under the UN-led aid scheme during the ceasefire in early 2025.
On July 29, the world's foremost experts on food insecurity, the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), said that the "worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip." Gaza's Ministry of Health reported that, as of July 30, 154 people, including 89 children, have died due to malnutrition since October 7, 2023, the majority of whom since July 19. On July 27, the Israeli military announced it would resume airdrops, designate secure routes for the entry of aid, and implement "humanitarian pauses" in populated areas to facilitate aid.
International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, applicable to the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, require parties at all times to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Attacks may only be directed against military objectives, and attacks that target civilians and civilian objects, or are indiscriminate, are prohibited. International human rights law, which also applies in Gaza, prohibits the intentional lethal use of firearms by law enforcement officials except when "strictly unavoidable to protect life." These standards also apply to private security personnel exercising police powers.
Under both bodies of law, authorities may take measures to ensure aid delivery, but the use of lethal force against civilians is strictly limited. For example, if civilians had moved off a route designated by the Israeli armed forces, that would not, in itself, make them targets who could be lawfully attacked. Nor would such a situation justify the intentional use of lethal force by policing authorities as "strictly unavoidable in order to protect life." The willful unlawful killing of civilian members of the occupied population is a war crime.
The repeated use of lethal force against Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces, without justification, violates both international humanitarian and human rights law. Human Rights Watch is not aware of any evidence in the cases documented that those killed represented an imminent threat to life at the time they were killed. The intentional use of lethal force by those exercising policing powers without lawful justification also violates human rights law. Regular killings by Israeli forces near GHF sites also amount to war crimes, given all the evidence indicating that these are deliberate, targeted killings of persons the Israeli authorities would know would be Palestinian civilians.
On June 26, one month after SRS started distributing aid at the sites, the US government announced it was allocating US$30 million to GHF. The source of funding for GHF's first month of distributions remains unknown; in its letter to Human Rights Watch, counsel for GHF said it "received $100 million from a government other than the United States or Israel," without specifying the government.
The Trump administration sent the allocation by circumventing congressional approvals. The United States is complicit in Israeli violations of the laws of war in Gaza, given its provision of substantial military aid despite knowledge of the continuing grave violations.
The US Congress should also be requiring notifications on any additional funding destined for GHF and demand a report on how US funds are being used currently, including an assessment of the effectiveness of the aid for starving Palestinians.
Pursuant to their obligations under the Genocide Convention, states should use all forms of their leverage, including targeted sanctions, an arms embargo and suspension of preferential trade agreements, to stop Israeli authorities' ongoing atrocity crimes.
"It is indefensible that, instead of using its significant leverage to press Israel to end its ongoing acts of genocide, the US is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians as a method of crowd control," Wille said. "States should urgently act to stop the extermination of Palestinians."
Israeli Killings of Palestinians Seeking Food Aid
According to the UN, at least 1,373 Palestinians were killed as they tried to access food between May 27 and July 31, 2025, most by the Israeli military, including 859 who were in the vicinity of GHF sites.
Dr. Victoria Rose, a British doctor who worked at a large hospital in Gaza in May and June, said that on June 1 staff were alerted that there had been mass casualties at Site 1 that morning. She said throughout May, she had not seen any patients with gunshot wounds, only blast injuries. However, on that day, she said over 100 people-mostly men but also some women and teenage boys-were brought into the hospital with gunshot injuries. Two of the men she treated had been shot in the back of their legs. "Already by the late morning there were over 10 bodies piled up against one side of the emergency room," she said. According to the Gaza's Ministry of Health, 31 died that day.
Dr. Nick Maynard, another British doctor working at the same hospital in Gaza in June and July, echoed that there has been an uptick in gunshot injuries with the increased distributions via the GHF mechanism. Individuals who sustained injuries at or near distribution sites were mostly teenage boys with gunshot injuries in the abdomen, neck, head, or groin area, he said.
Humanitarian organizations on the ground have documented similar trends. Doctors Without Borders noted "a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds" at the time of the expansion of GHF aid distributions. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on July 8 highlighted a similar "sharp surge in mass casualty incidents linked to aid distribution sites," saying the organization's medical team treated "over 2,200 weapon-wounded patients" and logged more than 200 deaths, "a scale and frequency … without precedent." After the mass casualty event on June 1, the ICRC noted that "all patients said they had been trying to reach an aid distribution site."
The Israeli military has largely responded to questions about killings of Palestinians seeking aid by saying they fired on people they viewed as a "threat," or when crowds moved in a way that "threatened the forces," or that they were merely firing "warning shots." Based on accounts from Israeli officers and soldiers, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that soldiers were "ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution points in Gaza, even when no threat was present," something Anthony Bailey Aguilar alleges he witnessed on numerous occasions. Aguilar told Human Rights Watch that he was monitoring a distribution at Site 4 in a control room along with a senior Israeli commander, who told Aguilar to give the order to contractors to shoot three unarmed children who an adult had lifted up onto a Hesco barrier (a large, collapsible wire mesh container lined with a heavy-duty fabric and filled with sand, dirt, or gravel to create a solid wall) to avoid being crushed or trampled by the crowd. When he refused to give the order, the commander replied, "Tell your men to shoot them now or we will shoot them," Aguilar said. In the end, he said, no shooting occurred on that occasion because the children got down on their own.
