Footage of the newly opened Israeli-backed, US-supported aid distribution centers in Gaza is horrifying: Palestinians clamoring to get food; crowds being turned away; gunfire ringing out.

Israeli forces have in recent days gunned down Palestinians trying to secure food for their families and themselves, with at least 163 people reportedly killed.

Not only are these distribution centers deadly, but they fail to address the mass starvation taking place, which Palestinian officials have declared to be a famine. At least 60 children have already starved to death and the UN has declared that “Gaza is the hungriest place on earth.”

Rather than delivering food to the people who need it across Gaza, these distribution centers are furthering forced displacement, which some Israeli officials have already openly, unabashedly admitted is their ultimate goal.

But there is another way to get food to the people in Gaza: A humanitarian diplomatic convoy to break the Israeli-imposed siege of Gaza.

The current aid distribution centers came after more than 11 weeks of an Israeli-imposed total blockade on Gaza—no food, no medicine, just bombs and bureaucratic cruelty. The trickle of aid coming in has hardly made a dent. Mothers cradle skeletal infants and scour rubble for scraps. Fishermen are shot dead for casting nets, chronically ill patients left without access to medication. Aid trucks looted under the watch of Israeli drones.

This is not collateral damage – it is a deliberate strategy to create conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part. This did not just begin with the latest escalation – over 18 years of blockade on Gaza and 19 months of hostilities, Israeli authorities have carried out war crimes, crimes against humanity, including extermination, and acts of genocide.

Instead of halting these atrocities, the US, Israel’s chief backer, is facilitating them—supplying the bombs, providing the backing for accelerating ethnic cleansing, and now supporting and thereby legitimizing this dystopian aid scheme. These distribution centers, managed by the newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, operating in close coordination with Israeli forces and run by private military contractors, violate one of the most fundamental principles of humanitarian law: aid must be impartial.

Instead of aid reaching Palestinians where they are, Palestinians—most of who have already been displaced multiple times, and tens of thousands with chronic injuries—must now trek across active war zones to reach these so-called distribution centers, located in the areas that Israeli forces, with their troubling record of using starvation as a weapon of war, are actively seeking to concentrate the population into.

The subtext is clear: Palestinians will eat only what Israel permits, when and where Israel permits it, and only those permitted to eat by Israel, an occupying power bent on their extermination.

Israeli officials have openly declared their intent to empty Gaza. Israeli authorities in March 2025 created a government body to facilitate "voluntary” Palestinian migration from Gaza. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demands "the right to return to Gush Katif" (former illegal settlements that were located in Gaza). The "humanitarian zones" are a trap—a way to herd Palestinians into concentrated areas, where they can more easily be controlled and even expelled, facilitating further forcible displacement and ethnic cleansing.

The outsourcing of enforcement to private military contractors, which had notorious records in Iraq and Afghanistan and were difficult to hold accountable, is particularly sinister. The legal vacuum around contractors makes them perfect tools for plausible deniability, as we have already seen when Israeli authorities initially denied gunning down starving Palestinians rushing for aid. Who will be held responsible in these instances?

It is not enough for states in the EU and around the world to reject these new distribution centers. They need to take concrete action to challenge Israel’s grave abuses.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already ruled in January 2024 that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to a “real and imminent risk” that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the “the right of Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide.” The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant.

Under the Genocide Convention, all states have a duty to prevent genocide as soon as they learn of the risk. According to the ICJ, States must cooperate to end the illegal occupation of Palestine. Under the Geneva Conventions, states have the duty to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances. These duties are at the heart of the international legal system supposedly designed to prevent crimes that scar the consciousness of humanity. When an occupying power weaponizes hunger, third parties need to act.

Palestinian civil society organizations, along with over 900 other civil society organizations are calling for a humanitarian diplomatic convoy to break the siege—a coalition of nations’ diplomats accompanying aid trucks through Rafah or by sea, bypassing Israel’s stranglehold. The plan is simple, each state is asked to commit to sending a diplomatic delegation to escort the delivery of aid to Gaza. If enough states sign on, the diplomatic pressure might be strong enough to achieve the goal of delivering life-saving aid to Palestinians. This is not just logistically feasible; it is a call grounded in states’ international legal obligations.

Skeptics will cry, "But what about Hamas?" Here’s the truth: Humanitarian aid is never conditional. Deliberately starving civilians, even if the purported reason is to weaken militants, is a war crime—full stop.

Others will warn of the risk of further escalation. But Israel is already escalating. Gaza is already largely rubble. The real risk is inaction—allowing Israel to normalize mass starvation as a tool of war, and take a sledgehammer to the international legal order.

This is not just about Gaza. It is about to what extent nations care about international law. If the world accepts Israel’s blockade—we greenlight a future where might makes right.

A humanitarian diplomatic convoy is not just about delivering food. It is about reclaiming the principle that no government has the right to decide who eats and who starves. The time for handwringing is over. The time for action is now.