Palestinian women told to go to US-run aid sites in Gaza but killed and beaten instead – eyewitnesses
A Palestinian woman coming back from GHF distribution center in southern Gaza, where eyewitnesses say GHF staff pepper-sprayed the aid-seekers and beat them with batons, 24 July 2025
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 24 July 2025:
In an unusual move since it first began operations, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced on its Facebook page that aid distribution would today be exclusively for women. The distribution was supposed to be carried out at two locations in southern Gaza: the Saudi neighborhood in Rafah and the city of Khan Younis. The GHF’s call instructed women in Gaza to head to these points at 9:00 a.m.
“Our local team will guide women to a designated area where each will receive a box,” the GHF said in its announcement in Arabic, accompanied by what appears to be an AI-generated photo of smiling male GHF workers holding boxes and welcoming a group of women approaching them. “Men are requested to avoid the site during this distribution,” the statement added.
But when the women arrived, GHF personnel attacked them with pepper-spray and batons, while Israeli military vehicles opened fire with bullets over their heads, eyewitnesses said in testimonies obtained by Mondoweiss. One woman who was at the site says she witnessed a GHF worker beating a pregnant woman on her stomach. Other eyewitnesses reported to local journalists that two women were shot dead by the Israeli army and several others were injured.
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The women came from all over southern Gaza — al-Nuseirat, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, Rafah, and al-Mawasi — flocking to the Saudi neighborhood location in Rafah, which is under the complete control of the Israeli military. The distribution point is located at least five kilometers from the nearest inhabited area, meaning that any woman reaching the location and carrying a food box weighing at least ten kilograms would have to walk back five kilometers while suffering from exhaustion brought on by malnutrition.