How 7 deaths changed aid work in Gaza

For three days, Dr. Nour Al-Din Khaled Alamassi, the head of Project Hope’s medical team in Rafah, waited. After an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen early last week, Gaza was reeling — and across the territory, the fate of humanitarian aid seemed to be on pause. World Central Kitchen, a relief organization that had provided more than 43 million meals to the Gaza Strip since October, halted its operations. American Near East Refugee Aid, or Anera, another international organization, did the same. And Project Hope — which has provided medical care for thousands of Gazans since October — needed to regroup. “It is commonly understood that relief workers enjoy immunity during wars,” Alamassi told Devex, one day before Project Hope resumed its operations in Rafah and Deir al-Balah. “This event made us realize that there is no immunity.” The strike on World Central Kitchen staff — and the failure to keep them safe — is nothing new for aid workers in Gaza. Despite that, the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen staff members have prompted new scrutiny into a key element of the Israel-Hamas war: aid agencies and aid workers. After several months of warfare in which these issues appeared low on the international agenda, suddenly, they soared to the top — dominating front pages and White House press conferences, and shifting the dialogue between Israel, the United Nations, and the United States. But it is far from clear what happens next. Here are some of the main ripple effects of the World Central Kitchen deaths. Gaza is the deadliest place for aid workers in at least two decades Over the last six months, more aid workers have been killed in Gaza than in any other conflict annually in the last two decades, according to the Aid Worker Security Database. More than 200 aid workers have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces since the Israel-Hamas war began, with the vast majority of deaths — 196 out of 203 — recorded among Palestinians. “This is not at all an isolated incident. We have been getting these reports almost every other day for the past five, six months,” said Deepmala Mahla, the chief humanitarian officer of CARE. “The fact is, saving lives is costing lives.” Before the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the highest number of aid workers killed in a single year was reported in Syria, where in 2018, 56 people lost their lives. But in 2023, 62% of all aid worker deaths across the world took place in Gaza in just three months. <iframe src='https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/17472767/embed' title='Interactive or visual content' class='flourish-embed-iframe' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='width:100%;height:600px;' sandbox='allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-scripts allow-downloads allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation'></iframe><div style='width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;'><a class='flourish-credit' href='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/17472767/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/17472767' target='_top' style='text-decoration:none!important'><img alt='Made with Flourish' src='https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg' style='width:105px!important;height:16px!important;border:none!important;margin:0!important;'> </a></div> Aid worker deaths by country. There was Mohammed Hamed Mansour Madi, a nurse working for Project Hope. Mousa Shawwa, who worked for Anera. And the 178 staff members at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, among many more. “I no longer worry about my own safety,” said Alamassi, the Palestinian physician who has worked with Project Hope since December 2023. “Death feels inevitable here.” The death of foreign staff changed the tone The numbers have been ticking up for months. But after the strike on seven World Central Kitchen staff — six of whom were from Western countries — the death toll in Gaza seems to have struck a new chord. In part, that’s due to the star power the organization holds: It was founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, who launched the organization in 2010 after rising the culinary ranks in Washington, D.C. Since then, he’s piled on the accolades. His restaurants span the U.S. capital, and his awards for both culinary and humanitarian expertise have grown at a similar rate. And in a statement about the World Central Kitchen attack, U.S. President Joe Biden referred to the 54-year-old chef as a friend. “I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen,” said U.S. President Biden in a statement after the attacks. “Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians.” The Israeli investigation into the World Central Kitchen attack classified the incident as a “grave mistake” — the result of a “serious failure due to a mistaken identification” and “errors in decision-making.” Two officers were dismissed while three were reprimanded, and in a statement, the Israel Defense Forces committed to learning from the incident. "Is there a difference when foreign nationals are killed versus Palestinians who are killed?" asked Amber Alayyan, Médecins San Frontières' Palestine medical program manager, in a press briefing last Thursday. "A humanitarian worker is a humanitarian worker. A doctor is a doctor, and a nurse and a nurse. It shouldn't matter what passport you carry." Deconfliction is not working So why is Gaza more deadly than anywhere else? The answer, aid agencies say, is a failure of deconfliction — where aid agencies coordinate their movements and share their locations with military parties. After a Project Hope nurse was killed by an Israeli airstrike in early March, Arlan Fuller, the organization’s director of emergency response and preparedness, asked his staff a question. Did they want to start sleeping in a deconflicted zone, one that would be off-limits to strikes? Every single staff member said no. “Palestinians did not feel they would be any safer if we would deconflict their homes — in fact, they felt it would put them even more at risk,” Fuller told Devex. “This is a level of trust that is non-existent … as they’ve seen one after the next after the next perish in this conflict.” After the World Central Kitchen attacks, that trust seems to have eroded further. The team, traveling in armored cars branded with the organization’s logo, had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces, traveling in a deconflicted zone after unloading more than 100 tons of food aid into Gaza. Despite that, the team was targeted and attacked, with the Israel Defense Forces stating one of the commanders “mistakenly assumed” there were Hamas gunmen inside World Central Kitchen’s vehicles. “Those who approved the strike were convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives and not WCK employees,” stated the Israel Defense Forces in a press release published on Friday. But after the deaths of 203 aid workers, for many working in Gaza, such an explanation means nearly nothing. “The concept of deconfliction, at this point, has become almost a joke,” said Alayyan in a press briefing last Thursday. “Normally, you are in communication with the army when you’re working in war zones. We don’t have that direct line of communication.” In a recent statement, InterAction listed several attacks on humanitarian workers and civilians in Gaza over the past six months. There was the strike on the Medical Aid for Palestinians and International Rescue Committee’s shared guest house in January, the alliance stated, one that was considered a safe zone prior to the attack. Two months earlier, the strike on Al-Awda Hospital killed two Médecins Sans Frontières doctors, followed by a siege that killed more medical staff just days later. “I no longer worry about my own safety. Death feels inevitable here.” --— Dr. Nour Al-Din Khaled Alamassi, physician, Project HOPE “This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence,” said Christopher Lockyear, the secretary-general of Médecins Sans Frontières, in a press briefing last week. “It not only shows the failure of deconfliction measures. It shows the futility of these measures in a war fought with no rules.” Lockyear said after coordinating movements with the Israeli military, his teams are left in a “big black box.” “Clearly, troops on the ground, tank commanders, and aerial drones are not getting those messages,” Lockyear said. “What we need to see is a change to the way this conflict is being fought and a cease-fire.” Pressurized politics In the wake of the World Central Kitchen attacks, pressure on Israel has been mounting. Andrés, the celebrity chef behind World Central Kitchen, demanded an independent investigation into whether Israel had deliberately targeted his staff. The U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power pushed the Israeli government to “do far more” to protect both aid workers and civilians from IDF military operations. And U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for independent investigations into the deaths of aid workers killed in the Gaza Strip — along with the release of hostages still held by Hamas, a humanitarian cease-fire, and “the unimpeded delivery” of aid. “Lives are shattered,” said Guterres, speaking to reporters on Friday. “Respect for international humanitarian law is in tatters.” In a phone call with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Thursday, Biden said his country’s policies related to Gaza would hinge on Israel’s actions following the World Central Kitchen attack — and whether the country would take “specific, concrete, and measurable steps” to protect both civilians and aid workers. The same day, a group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives urged both Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do more: namely, to pause arms transfers to Israel until a full investigation into the World Central Kitchen airstrike is completed. The letter — signed by over 30 representatives — called out the latest of those transfers, which the lawmakers stated included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, 500 500-pound bombs, and 25 fighter jets. “You can be a friend of Israel and at the same time you can be telling your partner in the Middle East, 'You cannot be conducting war in such a way,” said Andrés in an interview with ABC News over the weekend. “You cannot be destroying every building, every hospital, every school, every university. You cannot be destroying the future, for decades, of more than 2 million Palestinians.” On Friday, Israel said it would be opening more aid routes into the territory, including making the country’s Ashdod port available for aid deliveries, and opening the Erez border crossing just north of Gaza City, according to reporting from The Washington Post. Andrés said that was a “first step” for opening more entry points — but with a caveat. “How do we do it in a way that is safe, and lets the humanitarian aid flow?” said Andrés. “Let’s make sure that the IDF has a real reckoning on how they conduct war. Who are the enemy? Who really are they fighting?” A few days later, the Israeli military announced that 468 aid trucks had entered Gaza on Tuesday — the highest number in a single day since the war began. USAID Administrator Samantha Power said her teams were seeing “a sea change” in increased aid into Gaza, though more was needed to address the territory’s spiraling needs. “We have famine-like conditions in Gaza and supermarkets filled with food within a couple of kilometers away," Power said at a recent Capitol Hill hearing with U.S. lawmakers, which focused on the agency’s 2025 budget request. “We need to go way beyond the 500 trucks.” Where Gaza stands Before World Central Kitchen paused its operations in Gaza, the organization said it had provided more than 43 million meals to those in the besieged territory. Just before being hit by the Israeli missiles, the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid into the Gaza Strip. After the deaths of the seven staff members, three additional ships loaded with food for Gaza reversed course. Hundreds of tons of aid meant for starving communities sailed back to Cyprus, halting activity in World Central Kitchen's short-lived maritime corridor. It was a devastating blow to a population desperate for aid, as the bulk of humanitarian supplies are struggling to pass into the territory. The latest data from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, found that 85% of food trucks are denied or impeded by patrols at the Gaza-Israel border. Often, CARE’s Mahla said, that’s due to dual-use issues, and whether a material — like a tent pole or wooden box — could be turned into a weapon. Between October and March, over half of all World Health Organization missions have been “denied, delayed, impeded or postponed,” the agency said in a recent statement. “As health needs soar, the lack of a functional deconfliction system is a major obstacle in delivering humanitarian aid — including medical supplies, fuel, food and water to hospitals — anywhere close to the scale needed,” WHO wrote. At the same time, 1.1 million people in Gaza are facing imminent famine, while more than 33,000 have already died, according to figures from the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report and the territory’s Ministry of Health, respectively. “The key issue here isn’t about NGOs pulling out — it’s about our ability to deliver,” said Mahla. “And now, our ability to even be there and survive. The ball is not in our court.”