Aid in Gaza has become a death sentence. Since the end of May, at least 640 Palestinians have been killed and over 4,400 injured while attempting to collect humanitarian aid, as Israeli forces continue to target starving civilians in what human rights groups are calling a campaign of systematic execution. Every queue for bread or flour is now a potential massacre.

On Thursday alone, at least 63 Palestinians were killed, including 31 who were simply waiting for food. In Gaza City, shelling near the Nabulsia Roundabout killed seven and wounded over a hundred more. In Rafah, eight bodies and 30 injured civilians arrived at the Red Cross Hospital after an Israeli strike on an aid queue. Further south, in Khan Younis, ten more were killed in an airstrike. The list of the dead grows longer each day, and they are overwhelmingly women, children, and the elderly, those with no weapon but hunger.

The so-called “American-Israeli mechanism” for aid delivery, launched on 27 May 2024, has not only failed, it has become a trap. Survivors describe long hours in humiliating lines, exposed and vulnerable, only to be met with sniper fire, drone strikes, and tank shells. Human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières, have condemned the killings as war crimes. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has called for international investigations and demanded that Israel be held accountable for turning food distribution into a tool of death.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has demanded safe corridors and an urgent review of the broken aid system. The EU expressed “deep shock,” calling for civilian protection, while the UN Human Rights Council warned that global silence in the face of these crimes amounts to complicity.

Since 7 October 2023, more than 56,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 131,000 wounded. In the past three weeks alone, over 6,300 people have died, many of them searching for food. As Gaza faces total collapse, the world is witnessing a man-made famine enforced by military might, where even the desperate act of seeking bread is met with bullets.