'The Witkoff Massacre': Hundreds Killed or Wounded as Israeli Forces Open Fire on Gaza Food Aid Site

"The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them."

Steve Witkoff in Tel Aviv, May 15, 2025 -- U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Fresh international outrage erupted on Sunday after Israeli forces opened fire on hundreds of starving Palestinians in Gaza gathered at a food distribution point where they had been directed by Israeli officials, resulting in a massacre described by witnesses as the largest since a new U.S.-backed humanitarian plan run by Israel was put in place last month.

Health officials in Gaza and multiple witnesses at the site near the southern city of Rafah reported that "Israeli forces fired on crowds around a kilometer (1,000 yards) away from an aid site run by an Israeli-backed foundation," according to the Associated Press.

"The international community must act immediately and decisively to compel Israel to end its inhumane aid distribution mechanism in Gaza, following today’s massacre near a U.S.-backed aid centre south of Rafah, where Israeli forces killed or injured over 220 starving civilians," said the Switzerland-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), in a Sunday morning statement, which had personnel on the ground near the aid station.

According to the group:

Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented Israeli forces opening fire on thousands of civilians gathered at dawn today, Sunday, 1 June 2025, in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah, near an aid distribution centre established by the Israeli army. Preliminary data indicate that the attack killed at least 31 civilians, including two women, and injured more than 200 others. Several remain missing.

The death toll is expected to rise due to the high number of critical injuries and the severe collapse of the healthcare system caused by the blockade and Israeli targeting of medical facilities.

In early May, as Common Dreams reported, United Nations aid officials and other humanitarian relief experts warned against the plan put forward by Israel and backed by the Trump administration that would allow a private and newly created Israeli foundation, euphemistically named the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to administer the delivery of aid across Gaza with security provided by the IDF and U.S. mercenary soldiers.

"There is no reason to put in place a system that is at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organization," said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on May 9.

The controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been marred by controversy since its creation last month and denounced as operating as cover for Israel's ongoing atrocities against the Palestinian people in Gaza, said in a statement reviewed by the AP that it distributed 16 truckloads of aid early Sunday "without incident," and dismissed what it referred to as "false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos."

Footage and testimony from witnesses at the scene posted online, however, made those claims look like lies:

Dr. Ramy Abdul, a professor of law and Euro-Med chair, however, shared footage of the scene where the killings and chaos took place and said: "The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them."

As did others, Abdul dubbed the horrific event the "Witkoff Massacre," a reference to President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff, now in charge of brokering a U.S.-sponsored cease-fire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government.

The AP reports:

Thousands of people headed toward the distribution site hours before dawn. As they headed toward the site, Israeli forces ordered them to disperse and come back later, witnesses said. When the crowds reached the Flag Roundabout, around 1 kilometer (1,000 yards) away, at around 3 a.m., Israeli forces opened fire, the witnesses said.

"There was fire from all directions, from naval warships, from tanks and drones," said Amr Abu Teiba, who was in the crowd.

He said he saw at least 10 bodies with gunshot wounds and several other wounded people, including women. People used carts to ferry the dead and wounded to the field hospital. "The scene was horrible," he said.

Most of the casualties were shot "in the upper part of their bodies, including the head, neck and chest," said Dr. Marwan al-Hams, a health ministry official at Nasser Hospital, where many of the wounded were transferred after being initially brought to a field hospital run by the Red Cross.

In a point-by-point breakdown on Friday, Drop Site News' Jeremy Scahill detailed that Witkoff, through his negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is trying to "strong-arm Hamas into a deal that does not end the genocide" that continues apace in Gaza.

After Israel last week rejected tentative language amenable to both the U.S. and Hamas negotiators, Witkoff responded on Saturday to an updated draft submitted by Hamas with a rejection of his own, calling it "totally unacceptable."

Meanwhile, the threat of famine for the entire population of Gaza continues—all with firm U.S. backing and complicity, infuriating humanitarians worldwide as the death and suffering mounts.

Reda Abu Jazar told Al-Jazeera on Sunday that her brother was among those killed as he attempted to retrieve food at the distribution site in Rafah.

"Let them stop these massacres, stop this genocide. They are killing us," she said.

Multiple deadly incidents over recent weeks at the aid delivery sites set up by the Israelis led Euro-Med on Sunday, following the latest massacre, to say "these incidents should not be dismissed as procedural issues fixable through operational adjustments."

"They must be understood within the broader context of the grave consequences of the Israeli military's control over humanitarian aid" in Gaza, the group continued. "It is inconceivable that the same entity accused of committing genocide for nearly 20 months can be entrusted with improving the humanitarian conditions of the very population it targets."

Euro-Med called for an "immediate end to the Israeli aid distribution mechanism in the Gaza Strip... as it has become a site of field executions and fails to meet even the most basic humanitarian standards."

The group called for the reinstatement of UN-led relief operations "to ensure the safe and effective delivery of aid to Gaza's population."

Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.

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