Press Release: Veritas Press C.I.C.
Author: Kamran Faqir
Article Date Published: 04 Aug 2025 at 18:26 GMT
Category: Middle East | Palestine-Gaza | US-Israel At War
Source(s): Veritas Press C.I.C. | Multi News Agencies
In yet another grim chapter of Gaza’s deepening catastrophe, at least 74 Palestinians were killed on Monday alone, including 36 civilians seeking aid, as Israeli forces continued their relentless bombardment and blockades. The same day, a nurse, Udai al-Quraan, was killed not by bombs or bullets, but by an air-dropped box of food intended to save lives.
The tragic irony is not lost on those in Gaza, where the humanitarian infrastructure has all but collapsed and the act of seeking food has become a lethal gamble. What was once a thriving, overcrowded enclave is now a place where survival hinges on the choice between starvation and being shot at the gates of aid sites.
“No one comes back safe from the food lines,” said Bilal Thari, a father of five in Deir al-Balah. “You either return with a bag of flour or on a stretcher, dead or wounded.”
Airdrop That Killed:
Al-Quraan, a nurse at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, was killed in Al-Zawaida, central Gaza, when an aid crate plummeted from the sky and struck him. Only two days earlier, he had warned publicly about the dangers of aerial aid, calling for the border crossings to be opened to allow safe and sustained humanitarian access.
“He was one of our best,” said Dr. Salim Abu Rizq, a colleague at the hospital. “Now even the people who heal us are dying under food boxes. Is this humanitarianism?”
The incident has reignited fierce criticism of the U.S.- and EU-backed airdrop campaigns, which continue despite warnings from aid agencies and logistical experts that randomised, uncoordinated drops are causing chaos, injury, and even death.
“Airdrops are a last resort in inaccessible areas, not a strategy for a densely populated enclave like Gaza,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “What’s needed is access, not parachutes.”
Aid Lines Becoming Killing Fields:
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 42 of Monday’s dead were gunned down or bombed while attempting to access aid. Most were hit near aid distribution points run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.-funded entity operating since May.
“People came to these points thinking it would be safer,” said Nour Baroud, a 28-year-old survivor who lost her cousin in one such incident near Khan Younis. “But the Israeli snipers are always there. It’s a trap, not aid.”
According to UN humanitarian officials, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed while attempting to receive food since the GHF began operating, most shot by Israeli forces stationed near or overlooking aid sites. Despite repeated requests, the Israeli army has refused to release targeting guidelines or explain the deployment of lethal force around food distribution points.
“What we are witnessing amounts to the systematic criminalisation of hunger,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine. “The Israeli government is not just obstructing aid, it is weaponising it.”
The Numbers Behind The Horror:
UNICEF now reports that 28 children are being killed every day in Gaza, equivalent to an entire classroom daily. The UN children’s agency says at least 93 children have died of starvation, while 180 total have officially succumbed to hunger. However, humanitarian groups believe the real figure is much higher due to widespread displacement and reporting breakdowns.
“It’s not just bombs killing children anymore. It’s the policy of starvation,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director. “What kind of world lets babies die because trucks can’t get through?”
Despite repeated international appeals, Israel continues to allow only a fraction of the required aid into the besieged enclave. Since July 27, an average of 84 trucks per day have entered Gaza. Before the war, 600 trucks daily were needed to meet basic needs.
More than 22,000 trucks are currently stranded outside Gaza at Israeli-controlled checkpoints, waiting for Israeli clearance. Many carry perishable goods and essential medical supplies, which are deteriorating in the desert heat.
“Israel is using bureaucracy as a weapon,” said Yara Hawari, senior analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. “The world calls this a ‘logistical challenge.’ But to Gazans, it’s slow death by spreadsheet.”
Families Wait For The Missing:
In Deir al-Balah, Suhail Mansour is still searching for his 17-year-old son, who left to find flour two weeks ago and never came back. “Every day I visit hospitals, I check under body bags,” he said. “I pray for a corpse, because the alternative is worse, not knowing.”
Hanan Abu Salem, a 32-year-old mother, hasn’t heard from her husband since he went out with neighbours to collect aid. “We have three children. We boiled weeds yesterday. Today there’s nothing left,” she told Al Jazeera.
Doctors in central Gaza say most patients arriving from aid sites suffer from bullet wounds, shrapnel injuries, or severe dehydration, a product of standing in long lines under the August sun with no shelter.
“This is no longer humanitarian failure, it’s humanitarian extermination,” said Dr. Mariam Al-Sakani, a surgeon in Rafah. “We are watching a society be dismantled in front of our eyes, not just by war but by engineered starvation.”
A System Of Destruction:
Rights groups say what is unfolding in Gaza is not simply the collateral damage of war but a coordinated system of destruction, a combination of siege warfare, deliberate de-development, and psychological warfare targeting Palestinians’ will to survive.
“Israel’s campaign is not just military, it is economic, nutritional, emotional,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch. “When civilians are being shot while collecting bread, you can no longer claim this is war. This is an atrocity by design.”
The Israeli government has rejected the allegations, asserting that aid distribution is being obstructed by Hamas and that civilians are being used as human shields. However, independent investigations, including those by B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Breaking the Silence, have documented systematic attacks on non-combatants, intentional withholding of aid, and the use of starvation as a tool of war.
“A Ceasefire Isn’t A Gift, It’s A Moral Imperative”:
As starvation tightens its grip, the calls for an immediate ceasefire are growing louder. Aid groups, medics, and UN agencies warn that even if the war stopped tomorrow, Gaza faces a generational humanitarian recovery.
“This isn’t just about stopping the bombs. It’s about undoing months of starvation, psychological trauma, and infrastructure annihilation,” said Lynne Hastings, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Yet with international paralysis, growing U.S. military backing, and continued Israeli escalation, the window for preventing mass death by famine may have already closed.
“If this isn’t genocide, what is?” asked Mohammed el-Kurd, Palestinian author and activist. “The world is watching children starve, and doing nothing but send them parachutes and condolences.”
In Summary: Starvation By Design, Silence By Complicity.
What is unfolding in Gaza is not a humanitarian crisis in the traditional sense; it is a calculated collapse, engineered through siege, enforced starvation, and the criminalisation of survival itself. The death of nurse Udai al-Quraan, crushed by an air-dropped aid box while trying to save lives, is not an unfortunate accident. It is a grotesque symbol of a system where even the illusion of aid is weaponised.
This is not merely about insufficient food deliveries or logistical delays. It is part of a broader, deliberate design, a blueprint of violence that includes massacres of civilians, forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and what legal scholars and human rights bodies increasingly describe as genocide. Gaza is being systematically depopulated, demolished, and denied a future. And those who suffer most are the innocent children whose only crime was to ask for food.
The design is not new. It echoes the colonial logic of past empires. During the British Raj’s orchestrated famines and population transfers in India, officials justified brutal policies with bureaucratic detachment. As Sir Charles Trevelyan, the British administrator of the 1840s Irish famine and a key figure in British India, notoriously declared:
“The famine is a mechanical necessity. It is the judgement of God sent to teach the Irish a lesson… The selfish, perverse, and turbulent people must now experience the consequences of their own actions.”
That same cold rationality, deeming starvation as policy, not tragedy, is now being replicated in Gaza under the guise of “security.” Civilians are bombed while collecting flour. Children starve in plain view of aid trucks held at shuttered borders. Families are forced from their homes again and again, only to die in tent camps, if not under rubble or sniper fire.
“This isn’t a breakdown of humanitarian aid. This is a war on humanity itself,” said Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. “The world is not witnessing a crisis. It is witnessing a crime in real time.”
Yet world powers, chief among them the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, have offered weapons, funding, and diplomatic shields, not accountability. Every day without a ceasefire is a day the international community enables the siege. Every aid truck blocked, every child killed, every family starved is not just a consequence of war, but of wilful global complicity.
This is not the fog of war. It is coordinated state violence, executed in full view, archived by journalists, medics, NGOs, and eyewitnesses. The legal, moral, and historical record is being written with everybody buried in hunger and every home lost to fire.
Gaza is not spiralling into catastrophe; it is being dragged there. Deliberately. Methodically. With impunity.
The question is no longer whether the world knows. It does. The only question left is: how many more must die before it dares to act?
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