Human Rights Organizations Demand that Israel Stop Using Aid as Tool of Forcible Transfer
On 16 August 2025, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) announced that Israel would begin allowing entry of tents and other shelter equipment to Gaza after over five months of totally blocking their entry, but only to southern Gaza “as part of the IDF’s preparations to move the population from combat zones.” The decision represents a cynical exploitation of the population’s desperate need for adequate shelter and demonstrates yet again how Israel uses aid as weapon of war and displacement.
Gisha, together with Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, HaMoked, and Physicians for Human Rights Israel warned Israel’s Prime Minister, Defense Minister, and COGAT in a letter that, if implemented, the decision to selectively distribute aid constitutes a war crime and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer. More than 86 percent of the Strip’s territory has been declared by Israel to be off-limits, being either under displacement orders or designated as no-go zones. Nearly 800,000 people have been displaced, many more than once, since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, 2025. Some 92 percent of housing units in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed, while it’s estimated that 1.35 million residents are in urgent need of shelter items.
As a party to the hostilities and as occupying power, Israel bears obligations towards the civilian population under international humanitarian law, as well as Israeli law. At a minimum, Israel is obligated to allow the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid to the population, wherever they are located, including in active combat zones.
The letter states: “In the present reality of starvation, widespread killing of civilians, daily risk of loss of life, and the massive destruction of infrastructure, healthcare facilities, and homes, any decision to relocate is a decision made in a search for survival. Living conditions in the Gaza Strip have become inhumane and life-threatening every day and every hour. Under these circumstances, the decision to use tents as a means to transfer the protected population southward constitutes exploitation of the coercive environment that Israel has created in Gaza, and therefore any transfer of the civilian population under these conditions amounts to forcible transfer.”
Photo by Ali Hassan/Flash90
