Firstly, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) report, This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing, is based on extensive medical data that was collected and analysed by MSF teams, testimonies from patients who were at the GHF distribution sites, and firsthand witnessing by our medical teams who treated them. During the first seven weeks of GHF’s operation, MSF teams documented that 28 people had been killed and over 1,300 wounded; 71 of them were children with gunshot wounds. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as many patients go to other facilities.  

Secondly, GHF’s claim that “they safeguarded our medical supplies” is simply misleading and incorrect.

Our teams requested that the private contractors of Safe Reach Solutions help maintain the temperature levels of medicines blocked at the Kerem Shalom crossing. Without maintaining temperatures, these vital medicines would have otherwise spoiled, making them unfit for use, due to blockages and delays of movement imposed by the Israeli authorities, and the ongoing violence in the Strip. 

The request to assist with preventing boxes of medicines from being spoilt was made to a proxy of the Israeli authorities — not to a fellow ‘humanitarian’ agency, as has been falsely claimed. Under international humanitarian law, it is Israel that bears the obligation to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, not to block it. Our supplies have been repeatedly blocked by Israeli authorities since the outset of the conflict. 

This can in no way shape or form be considered as a form of acknowledgement of GHF as a humanitarian organisation. MSF has called time and again for the immediate shutdown of GHF’s activities because they are deadly and ineffective. For over two months, GHF has operated in a manner that has seriously violated humanitarian principles, killed and injured thousands of starved Palestinians desperately seeking food.