By Gabe Joselow and Aurora Almendral —
NBC News
The bombing that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has marked a turning point in US support for Israel and will impact efforts to bring food to Palestinians on the brink of starvation.
An investigation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) suggests that this was an attack due to “serious error.” But the increasing number of casualties suffered by humanitarian organizations since the war broke out in Gaza points to failures by the Israeli military in its obligation to protect aid workers there.
Since the beginning of the conflict,
224 of them have died
, according to the United Nations (UN).
Last Monday's attack has sparked global outrage, fueling international pressure for a ceasefire and forcing Israel to open new entry points for humanitarian aid.
This is how one of the World Central Kitchen vehicles was hit by Israeli missiles. Seven humanitarian workers lost their lives.Associated Press
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have expressed regret over the fatal bombing. The IDF said Friday it had removed two senior officers from their positions after an investigation determined that the attack on the humanitarian convoy with three missiles violated army protocol.
In a briefing on Friday, the IDF stated that World Central Kitchen (WCK) had correctly coordinated its movements with Israeli authorities,
but that officers made three errors.
First, they did not see or read a logo that identified the convoy. Then, they decided to shoot at the vehicle for no reason, claiming that one of the soldiers had identified someone who got into one carrying what they believed was a gun, but in reality it was probably a bag. The third mistake, according to the IDF, was that they continued to attack not only the first car, but also the second and third.
“The essential problem is not who made the mistakes,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Friday in response to the IDF investigation. “The military strategy and current procedures are what allow these errors to multiply again and again.”
[What is World Central Kitchen, the NGO of chef José Andrés, and how the Israeli attack against its workers will affect Gaza]
Unlike the attack on WCK staff members, who were citizens of the United States, Canada, Australia, Poland and the United Kingdom, other deadly incidents against humanitarian workers, mostly Palestinians, have drawn little outrage or attention from the Israeli governments or the international community.
Other attacks on humanitarian workers
After reviewing documents, public statements and interviews, NBC News found a pattern of attacks against aid workers and humanitarian infrastructure months before Monday's attack. These include two incidents in which WCK was involved, the dropping of a 1,000-pound bomb near a building housing humanitarian workers from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the bombing of the home of a Doctors Without Borders collaborator. Borders (MSF).
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has suffered more attacks than any other: 179 of its employees have been killed since October 7.
The attacks have led to a direct reduction in aid deliveries to the needy population of Gaza. After Monday's massacre, at least four organizations stopped their deliveries, citing the danger to their personnel, including WCK, which returned three ships heading to the strip to the port of Cyprus with 240 tons of food aid that it planned to distribute.
But even before those attacks, the destruction in Gaza and the hostilities, as well as the anarchy that the conflict brought, were already preventing the delivery of aid to much of the enclave, especially in the north, where the threat of famine is most acute.
To work in a war zone, aid agencies rely on a process called
deconfliction
, which allows the military to take steps to prevent inadvertent attacks on aid workers, who are protected by international law.
[Progressives push a protest vote against Biden in the Wisconsin Democratic primary over the war in Gaza]
In Gaza, humanitarian agencies often report their convoy movements daily to the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)—the official Israeli government body that liaises between aid agencies and the military, and which They also control personnel access and aid shipments to the Strip—and provide the coordinates of their guest houses and warehouses.
Even with these mechanisms in place, they continue to suffer repeated attacks.
“The deconfliction
system
is effectively a fiction,” said Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president of recovery and crisis response development at the International Rescue Committee.
At a press conference on Thursday, Christopher Lockyear, Secretary General of MSF, stated: “This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicates reckless incompetence. "It not only demonstrates the failure of
deconfliction
measures
, but also the uselessness of these measures in a war that is fought without rules."
Shooting at Palestinian civilians
NBC News has learned of at least two other occasions in which WCK workers have been shot. On March 30, just two days before the deadly convoy attacks that killed seven of its workers, the organization said it believes an Israeli sniper fired at one of its vehicles, damaging a rearview mirror. WCK stated that no one was injured and that it reported the incident to the IDF.
A week earlier, on March 23, a convoy transporting WCK food and which was part of the first shipment received by sea in a maritime humanitarian operation promoted by the group, starred in a chaotic scene in the Kuwaiti roundabout in Gaza City. Witnesses told an NBC News crew on the ground that
Israeli forces shot at Palestinian civilians who were gathered waiting to receive aid.
Nineteen people were killed in the incident, according to the Gaza government press office, which blamed Israeli forces for opening fire with tanks and machine guns.
In images filmed by NBC News, bloody bodies could be seen lying between scattered cardboard boxes with the WCK logo. An injured man was lying on a plastic tarp with the organization's symbol.
WCK stated that in both incidents the group had communicated its movements to COGAT, as part of the established procedure.
NBC News contacted the IDF on Friday for comment on the incidents mentioned by WCK, along with six other incidents with aid workers detailed in this story, and has not received a response. In previous attacks on humanitarian aid convoys, including those at the Kuwait and Al-Nabulsi roundabouts, the IDF had claimed self-defense or the need to disperse crowds to open fire.
The IRC's Donnelly mentioned in an interview with NBC News that the organization informs the Israeli military of its fixed locations, as well as its future movements, through COGAT. However, on 18 January several IRC staff were injured
when a bomb exploded
just meters from an IRC compound in Al-Mawasi, a town outside Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
A UN assessment, which has been reviewed by NBC News, concluded that the explosive used was likely a 1,000-pound MK83 guided bomb, a weapon produced in the United States.
The IRC commented that it has received six different explanations from the IDF about what happened, from initially denying their involvement to acknowledging that they were trying to hit a nearby target or blaming alleged defects in the bomb.
[The convoy where the World Central Kitchen workers were traveling was identified with NGO logos]
Donnelly added that there are really only two plausible explanations for why the IDF has not been able to effectively deconflict in Gaza.
“One is a total failure of command and control,” he said. “And the other is a contempt for the
deconfliction
system ,
an intention behind the attacks
.”
Another aid group, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), was among those that suspended operations in Gaza on Tuesday, citing the risk to the safety of its staff.
On March 8, one of its workers, Mousa Shawwa, was killed in an airstrike while taking shelter with his family in a known location in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza.
In a statement, ANERA stated that Shawwa, a logistics coordinator, had just returned to the shelter after delivering aid when he was murdered, “despite the fact that the coordinates of the place had been provided in order to protect him on several occasions, even days before the stroke".
ANERA President Sean Carroll told NBC News he would like to believe the attack on Shawwa was unintentional. “There is nothing to indicate that he was a target, but they had the coordinates of the shelter and the bomb killed him.”
Shawwa's son Karim, 6, was also injured and later died.
ANERA demanded an independent investigation. The group told NBC that it has not received any explanation from the Israeli military for the attack.
“More military failures, more apologies and more grieving families”
Doctors Without Borders, which has seen several of its staff killed in military attacks, reported several incidents in which its positions were attacked despite having notified the IDF.
On February 20, an Israeli tank fired on a house in Al-Mawasi where MSF colleagues and their families were sheltering, killing two people.
A month earlier, on January 9, MSF claimed that a projectile had been fired at another shelter in Khan Younis,
killing the 5-year-old daughter of a staff member.
And on November 18, a convoy of its vehicles came under fire from Israeli snipers after being diverted from a checkpoint on an IDF-approved route while attempting to evacuate staff from its offices in Gaza City. Two people died in that incident.
In all cases, MSF claimed to have communicated their movements and locations to the IDF and reported the incidents through COGAT. He has not received any response or explanation for the attacks.
Aid agencies Project HOPE, Save the Children and Humanity and Inclusion have also suffered staff deaths in the war. UNRWA, which employs mostly Palestinian staff, has suffered the majority of the 224 aid worker deaths.
[Israel says that the attack that killed seven “innocent” workers of chef José Andrés' NGO “was not intentional”]
In a statement issued following the release of the IDF report, WCK stated that the Israeli military could not be trusted to impose accountability for its own actions. “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” he added.
“However, it is also clear from their preliminary investigation that the IDF has deployed lethal force without regard to its own protocols, chain of command and rules of engagement. The IDF has acknowledged that our teams followed all proper communication procedures. "His own video shows no cause to fire on our convoy, which carried no weapons and posed no threat."
“Without systemic change, there will be
more military failures, more apologies and more grieving families
,” the statement expanded.