Conspiracy, cock-up or solution? The Gaza aid foundation

When hunger gnaws, any offer of food comes as a relief. And so just before dawn on June 1st Ayman, a former taxi-driver from northern Gaza displaced seven times since the start of the war, left his tent on the beach. He and his brother walked 5km through the rubble to the edge of the remains of Gaza’s southern city, Rafah, and what they had been told was a new American food distribution centre there. They filed through a wire-mesh corridor towards a line of armed private-security contractors, some American, some speaking Arabic, who guarded piles of cardboard boxes filled with food. But the hungry Palestinians far outnumbered the boxes, Ayman says, and chaos erupted. Shots were fired; subsequent reports suggest some 30 people were killed. He and his brother have avoided the hubs ever since.