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Panorama Gaza Dying for Food (22nd September 2025)
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00:00to revive the hope of peace and a two-state solution the united kingdom formally recognizes
00:15the state of palestine prime minister kir starmer has kept his promise
00:23but in gaza israel is on the offensive israel faces accusations of a genocidal attack on gaza's
00:42palestinians not just with high explosive but by using food as a weapon of war if prime minister
00:51benjamin netanyahu decided that this famine would stop he could stop it in a matter of one two or
00:59three days more than 1 000 palestinians have been killed around the new israeli controlled food
01:06distribution sites and a whistleblower says he saw palestinians under fire as they tried to get
01:20food did you feel you were part of the humanitarian mission no when i was there i felt like i was in
01:28an offensive military base on the front line
01:34israelis and tourists can peer into gaza's hellscape not distant but isolated by israel from the world
01:58the viewing platform is here in sterot one of the front line communities targeted in attacks led by
02:04hamas on the 7th of october 2023 on that day hamas killed 1195 people and took 251 hostages
02:1648 israeli hostages are still in gaza perhaps 20 are thought to be alive i have reported on lots
02:26of wars over the years the best way to do it is to get to a place where you can talk to people
02:30now what is unique for me about this war is that i haven't been able to do it why because israel has
02:39closed the gates are not allowed reporters like me in there to report freely
02:50almost all gaza's population of more than two million has been displaced by israeli military
02:55action because israel won't let us enter gaza to report freely on a catastrophic war that's
03:02intensified the mutual hatreds of more than a century of conflict we commission local freelancers who
03:10are still able to operate on the ground we review and verify the material we receive reporting from
03:17a distance is not the way we want to work but given the constraints we believe we found the best
03:23obtainable way to tell the story of how gazans live and die
03:27it is
03:47one of more than 65 000 palestinians mostly civilians killed by israel according to the hamas run health
03:54ministry. With her two children, Reem says she's been forced to move five times. She
04:00was filmed in a tent in Gaza City.
04:03When the last ceasefire began on the 19th of January this year, Reem and two million
04:29others in Gaza had some hope. Food was coming in. But on the 2nd of March, Israel stopped
04:39all shipments into Gaza as ceasefire negotiations with Hamas were breaking down. Two weeks later,
04:46Israel went back to war. The global body that assesses food emergencies, the IPC, now says
04:54that Gaza is in a famine. About half of the Palestinian population can
05:00access enough food for bear survival. The most vulnerable are way, way below what is necessary
05:09for them to survive from day to day.
05:11There is a lot of war, and the situation is still difficult for us and for everyone.
05:31Before the war, I offered the children to give them food, to eat food, to eat food, to eat
05:38It's very, very rare to have a famine that has an off-switch, if you like.
05:58If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided that this famine would stop, he could stop
06:04it in a matter of one, two or three days.
06:17Israel denies there's a famine.
06:19It calls the overwhelming evidence presented by the IPC an outright lie.
06:25Reem says her 10-year-old son has tonsillitis.
06:28When children are hungry and weak, ordinary childhood bugs can get worse.
06:50In May, international pressure forced Israel to let some food into Gaza.
06:55With U.S. help, the Israelis came up with a new way to distribute it, establishing the
07:00Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF.
07:05Israel claimed the existing U.N. aid system was ineffective, allowing Hamas to steal food.
07:11The U.N. denies that, insisting its shipments are monitored and traceable.
07:15Israel, it says, has not provided evidence of systematic theft.
07:22Unlike the U.N., the GHF works out of sight secured by American Armed Security and the Israeli
07:29military, the IDF.
07:34Aid deliveries restarted through two crossings, Zikkim and Kerem Shalom.
07:39Israel stopped deliveries through Zikkim on the 12th of September.
07:43Israel, it's not far past six o'clock in the evening and here at the Kerem Shalom crossing
07:54point, well, nothing's happening.
08:00The only activity I can hear is coming from inside Gaza and its explosions.
08:05There was one just then.
08:07What I have found here, there are a couple of boxes of Gaza humanitarian foundation provisions.
08:15The U.N. and its partners used to distribute humanitarian assistance at 400 sites across Gaza.
08:22They've been largely replaced by three GHF sites in the south and one in the centre of the Gaza Strip.
08:30One closed after three weeks.
08:33With so few sites, hungry civilians, many who've walked all night through active combat zones,
08:39face a free-for-all when they open.
08:41And a lot of them leave empty-handed.
08:45Complete total chaos every day, this was the feeling.
08:50We spoke to an IDF soldier who served at a base overlooking GHF AIDS sites during the summer.
08:57He's still a reservist, so we're protecting his identity and calling him Michael.
09:02Every day we had a different hour of opening.
09:06So Palestinians came in in random hours looking for food and there was no food to give them.
09:13Until July, GHF announced its opening and closing times on social media.
09:19We've analysed them and found the longest they say a site was open was 46 minutes, but the average was 12.
09:26Lawyers for GHF told us they can open for up to five hours, depending on safety.
09:32I think it's hard to understand how low we degraded, like, common, regular people to a state of that much, like, hunger and frenzy about food.
09:48Michael says they were ordered to fire warning shots when they wanted to hold back the crowds.
09:54Is your concern that if you needed to get a message over to the Palestinians, a lot of the time the only way you could do it was by shooting?
10:01Yes, it concerned me a lot, because the moment they won't listen to the shots, they'll start running at us.
10:08And then we need to decide what we're doing with a thousand people on the way to the base.
10:13Adi says they had a system to decide when and where to shoot, which was not communicated to Palestinians.
10:21You have an imaginary line, you have a green one, you have a red one, and the green one, you shoot a warning shot.
10:35So they will understand that this is a no-go zone and they need to turn back.
10:39In the red one, it's too close, it's too dangerous, and then you use lethal force.
10:44But that never happened when you were there?
10:47By luck, I think.
10:49It sometimes felt like it's planned so badly that you can't believe it's not on purpose.
10:55When you have only three or four facilities operating for a fixed number of hours a day with a very limited supply of food,
11:09and you require, in an atmosphere of absolute desperation, individuals to queue in an orderly fashion,
11:19and you surround the facilities distributing the aid with an extremely heavy kinetic military presence,
11:28You're going to get exchanges, you're going to get violence.
11:33The GHF refused our request to film at one of its sites.
11:38Its lawyers say the IDF chooses their locations.
11:41The IDF didn't address our questions about Michael's account of red and green lines.
11:48It says it's learned lessons after civilian harm was reported at aid sites and that updated instructions were passed to its forces.
11:57Diyar lives in central Gaza with his wife and children.
12:01Diyar lives in central Gaza with his wife and children.
12:07Nineteen-year-old Abdullah's bedroom is empty.
12:18Diyar lives in central Gaza with his wife and children, 19-year-old Abdullah's bedroom is empty.
12:30calledoud Abdullah, there
12:48On the second of August, Abdullah went to GHAF site for because
12:54the family needed flour.
12:56These are the victims,
12:56this would be reallyгиant,
12:57which of theritical church.
13:00I was at the same time before the night.
13:02I said to him,
13:03God will forgive me.
13:04God will forgive me.
13:05God will forgive me.
13:06God will forgive me.
13:07I will not forgive you.
13:08God will forgive me.
13:09God will forgive me.
13:13Abdullah is my friend of mine.
13:15He is a man.
13:17Muaz says he went with Abdullah to the aid site.
13:21We went on the way we saw the Israeli army.
13:25We went to the bar of a hotel.
13:28We were standing beside her.
13:31It was a long wait.
13:32Muaz says Abdullah walked 30 metres away
13:35to deal with a call of nature.
13:39I came to the airport and I said,
13:41God will forgive me.
13:42God will forgive me.
13:43God will forgive me.
13:45I was waiting for him.
13:47I was waiting for him.
13:49I was waiting for him.
13:51I was waiting for him for a minute.
13:54I was waiting for him.
13:55I was waiting for him.
13:56I was waiting for him.
13:58I was waiting for him.
13:59I was waiting for him.
14:00I was waiting for him.
14:01Yeah.
14:09Based on Muaz's testimony,
14:11this is where Abdullah was killed.
14:13Less than 500 metres from the aid site,
14:16just in front of a bridge that leads to the entrance.
14:19Abdullah was shot at 8am.
14:32We've analysed the time and location data embedded in this video,
14:36which was later posted on social media.
14:38It was taken just 50 minutes after Abdullah was shot.
14:49It reveals the exact point where these people were under fire,
14:53just 135 metres from where Abdullah was killed.
14:57They're taking cover behind this sandbag,
15:03suggesting the fire is coming from the direction of the GHF aid site.
15:08The whole area is under Israeli military control.
15:12I was waiting for help.
15:15I took care of my help.
15:16I tried to make the people,
15:18to make someone help me.
15:20All the people were killed.
15:22They were killed.
15:23They were killed and killed.
15:25They were killed.
15:26They were killed and killed.
15:30A passer-by filmed as they took Abdullah's body to hospital.
15:33hospital. He was one of 18 people killed that day near the aid site, according to
15:41data gathered by ACLED, a group funded, among others, by the UN, the US and
15:46European governments. We asked the IDF specifically about the death of Abdullah.
15:53It didn't respond but told us it does not deliberately fire at innocent
15:59civilians. GHF's lawyers say its security contractors don't either. They also say
16:06they're not aware of any credibly documented instance of their ever doing
16:11so, and that no one has been shot dead at a GHF site or within sight of one.
16:29Unfortunately even the dead people in Gaza letter doesn't have this rest in
16:47Unfortunately, even the dead people in Gaza doesn't have this rest in peace.
17:01Taufik Omar is an NHS vascular surgeon just back in the UK from Gaza.
17:06In August, Taufik was based at NASA Hospital, only a few kilometres from the two southern
17:12GHF sites.
17:15You can see, literally, the patient is just on the floor everywhere.
17:21The blood is just covering all the floor and the smell of the blood is unbelievable, intolerable.
17:37Taufik says that after the aid sites opened each day, the hospital was overwhelmed with
17:42casualties.
17:44Most of the time, I experience very complicated, very devastating injuries being carried out
17:50from the GHF points miles away on just a wooden pallet, dragged in their blood.
17:59And they are just bleeding all the way.
18:03You can trace their way to the hospital through this bleeding.
18:08Most of the days, you have like 10 to 12 vascular injuries.
18:14I can say with confidence that more than 90% of those injuries has been reported to be due
18:24to gunshots.
18:26Since the GHF began its operations, at least 1,300 Palestinians have been killed at or around
18:37its sites, mostly according to ACLA data by IDF Fire.
18:42Across Gaza, Palestinians were being killed seeking aid in the year before GHF arrived, at
18:48an average rate of 30 per month.
18:55Since its sites opened, that's risen to 500.
18:57The IDF says it's not aware of hundreds of fatalities caused by its forces at distribution points.
19:05It says these figures are inflated and false.
19:10Were you able to tell who was doing the shooting?
19:14The local people coming from the GHF points are saying clearly that they can see the GHF security
19:25guards or the IDF personnel is shooting directly at the crowds.
19:37My job was being a truck driver, delivering aid into the different sites in Gaza.
19:42We've been speaking to a whistleblower who's worked at all the GHF sites because he's worried
19:48about his safety.
19:49We're protecting his identity and calling him John.
19:57He was so shocked by what he was seeing that he filmed it secretly.
20:06John says people gathered outside the sites before they opened, trying to get ahead in
20:11the deadly race for food.
20:15What would you be hearing?
20:16At the beginning, we would start hearing sporadic gunfire when the locals would start kind
20:21of forming up around the edges of the sites.
20:25We were basically under a constant background noise of gunfire.
20:38That would be from the nearby IDF bases as well as from the actual UG Solutions personnel,
20:45and they'd often shoot at the same time as the IDF.
20:50GHF employs subcontractors, an American company.
20:54UG Solutions runs security using former U.S. Special Forces soldiers.
20:59John worked for a logistics company.
21:03Could you tell who was shooting at who?
21:07Yes, because it's like the IDF, like they were shooting from larger caliber weapons.
21:17Could you tell what they were shooting at?
21:19The background is a civilian area, so there was just apartment buildings, streets, and they
21:26are shooting at that.
21:28This is one of John's videos.
21:29We're not revealing the exact date to help protect his identity.
21:33It shows rapid gunfire.
21:36We've used the time and location data embedded in this video to establish that it was filmed
21:42here at aid site number four.
21:45You can see these white tents here on this satellite image and in John's video.
21:52Based on the sound and the angle of the visible gunfire, our analysis suggests it comes from
21:58this IDF position, identified from satellite images, just behind the GHF aid site.
22:06And that the gunfire is aimed towards this area, in front of the aid site, where videos posted
22:13on social media show crowds often gathering, waiting for it to open.
22:20In the darkness and danger, it can take hours to get to the nearest hospital, which is Al Aouda,
22:26two and a half kilometres away.
22:28This footage of its emergency room was filmed soon after John recorded shooting at GHF site
22:35four.
22:38On that day, more than 20 people were killed near the site, according to ATLED.
22:44The IDF says its rules of engagement strictly prohibit the intentional targeting of civilians.
22:50You were in an area that was secured by these American security people.
22:57What was their mood?
22:58If they were talking about the Palestinians, it would be bastards.
23:02It would be .
23:03There was no mention of the civilians.
23:06It was always a drogatory term.
23:08A lot of the Americans seemed to be quite jubilant when the shooting was intensifying.
23:13What do you mean by that?
23:15Cheering.
23:17Stuff like hell yeah whenever there was a confirmed hit.
23:21UG Solutions says it does not tolerate bigoted or unprofessional behaviour.
23:29And those who have not acted professionally were terminated.
23:34It says it does not shoot at nor use any lethal weapons against local Gazan aid seekers.
23:43After more than a month in Gaza, John decided he'd had enough.
23:48Did you feel you were part of a humanitarian mission?
23:50No.
23:51When I was there, I felt like I was in an offensive military base on the front line.
23:57The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and
24:01his former defence minister, Yuav Gallant, accusing them of the war crimes of murder, persecution,
24:08and using starvation as a weapon.
24:11The ICC also issued warrants for Hamas leaders, who were all subsequently killed by Israel.
24:18War crimes investigations continue.
24:22We have had clear evidence of hundreds of people being killed trying to get access to
24:30these sites, and mostly by Israeli military, which is totally unacceptable, and that is a
24:36very grave breach, not only of international humanitarian law, but also international rights
24:40law.
24:41It is extremely important that those who commit war crimes, those who commit crimes against
24:48humanity, are held to account.
24:50They need to be brought to justice.
24:54Israel denies all allegations of war crimes, which it says are based on anti-Semitism.
24:58The Israeli ambassador in London declined to be interviewed for this film.
25:04The embassy directed us to the IDF.
25:07They too didn't want to be interviewed, but provided written responses included in this
25:12programme.
25:17Israel says the new offensive that's destroying Gaza City will deliver its elusive final victory
25:24over Hamas.
25:28The UK government says the offensive is utterly reckless and appalling.
25:39Once again, Shifa, Gaza City's battered main hospital, is dealing with dozens of casualties.
25:46The doctors told us that it takes so long to rescue the wounded and get them to Shifa through
25:51shelling and airstrikes, that they often can't do much more than watch them die.
26:00Israel is using such intense firepower that civilians who've spent two years refusing to
26:06leave their homes are now being forced to flee.
26:09Forcing Gaza and South suits the plan pushed by Netanyahu's hardline allies to seize the
26:27Gaza Strip for Jewish settlers and force Palestinians out.
26:32One extremist leader in the Israeli cabinet predicted a real estate bonanza.
26:38Two new GHF sites are being built in the South.
26:41Not enough for the people there already, let alone all the civilians Israel is forcing
26:46out of Gaza City.
26:47If it's proved that Israel is committing acts with the intent to destroy Gaza's Palestinians
26:52as a group, in whole, or in part, then genocide will be added to the list of war crimes that
27:00the whistleblowers are being forced to destroy Gaza's Palestinians as a group, in whole, or
27:04in part, then genocide will be added to the list of war crimes that the whistleblowers are
27:10John and many others say that they've witnessed.
27:25I just don't understand how people who might not have been there are saying that what I saw doesn't exist.
27:34I wish it never happened, but I saw it.
27:37I had to deal with this at the time, and I'm still dealing with the repercussions.
27:42Unfortunately, every day the patient is asking you to save him, and you would like to say to
27:55him, sorry, if you are in another war lead, I might be able to save you.
28:03Last month, when Israel was planning the current offensive, the world body that had already determined
28:29the existence of famine in Gaza issued a warning.
28:33Intensified military action and the forced relocation of already fragile civilian populations
28:41would make the famine in Gaza significantly more severe.
28:46That is now the risk.
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