In the Netzarim Corridor area of central Gaza, the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation operates a food distribution center, the only one serving the north and central parts of the Strip.

In recent weeks, thousands have gathered around it, many remaining there for days, hoping to return home with food for their families. Some have built makeshift shelters from scraps to shield themselves from the heat; others use the sacks meant to carry food as head coverings. They lie under the sun for days, hoping to reach the food in time, despite the clear danger posed by Israeli warning fire.

All experts and humanitarian organizations warned Israel that the plan to introduce the foundation would lead to disaster, as it violates every humanitarian principle developed over decades of aid distribution to civilian populations in conflict zones.

The first principle is that food should reach the people, not the other way around. But Israel, the United States and the organizations that established the GHF ignored all warnings, and so far, hundreds have been killed around the aid centers.

After the prime minister and defense minister dismissed the Haaretz investigation into the killing of civilians near aid centers as a “blood libel” and denied any problem, the military yesterday acknowledged “tragic incidents,” even placing new signs and fences along the routes to aid facilities.

But for Abd al-Karim al-Kahlut, a 35-year-old father of two young daughters from Gaza City, it is already too late.

Al-Kahlut embodies the desperation and cruelty facing the residents of the Gaza Strip.

A metalworker by trade, before the war, he had purchased equipment to open his own workshop. Even during the war, he continued to work.

“He built a business and it was going well, until the crossings were shut down and he couldn’t continue,” said his brother Safwat, who fled Gaza with his family.

During the war, Abd al-Karim’s home was destroyed, and he moved in with his brother’s family. Safwat said he sent money to his brother from abroad, but it wasn’t enough. In order to access money sent from outside Gaza, Abd al-Karim had to forfeit a large percentage to various middlemen, and whatever was left quickly lost its value.

“There was a time when 100 shekels covered everything you needed. Now it barely buys a kilo and a half of flour,” the brother said.

According to Safwat, his brother had visited the GHF food distribution site in Netzarim twice in the past two weeks. The last time was Wednesday, when he arrived along with thousands of other desperate residents. As on most days over the past month, gunfire was opened on those waiting in the sand — apparently to drive them back. Abd al-Karim didn’t manage to get food and was wounded by the gunfire.

Safwat said his brother returned home with a gunshot wound to his buttocks, which at first didn’t seem serious. But after a few hours, according to his family, he began to feel pain and went to Shifa Hospital.

“The doctors told him it was superficial and sent him home. In Gaza today, unless your legs or arms have been blown off, no one pays attention,” Safwat said. “He came home, but then his whole body started to hurt, and he couldn’t stand on his feet.”

Safwat adds that another brother later took Abd al-Karim back to the hospital, where doctors discovered a bullet inside his body. He underwent surgery successfully. In any decent hospital, in a functioning environment, he would undoubtedly have recovered in a matter of days and returned to his family. But after a year and a half of war, Shifa is no longer a functioning hospital.

Like the rest of Gaza’s hospitals, Shifa is facing levels of strain few hospitals in the world have ever had to endure. Hundreds of wounded and sick flood its wards every day. Many require complex treatment for shrapnel injuries, blast trauma, or gunshot wounds; others suffer from malnutrition, infectious diseases, or chronic illnesses worsened by dire living conditions.

One of the most critical problems hospitals face is access to CT scans. Only a few imaging machines remain in Gaza, and they have been running nearly nonstop for almost two years, poorly maintained and barely functional.

Patients in need of a CT scan are sometimes transferred dozens of kilometers just to be examined.

Abd al-Karim’s condition didn’t appear severe enough to justify precious minutes on the machine, so the doctors didn’t perform a scan. “There’s one machine and a lot of wounded,” his brother explains. Meanwhile, he was suffering from internal bleeding that the doctors failed to detect, and a day after the surgery, he died from his wounds.

“In Gaza today, the problem isn’t who dies,” Safwat adds. “We say those who die are finally at peace. The real problem is those who are left with the pain.”

Now the family is worried about their father, who suffers from heart disease and needs medication. “His medicine ran out a long time ago, and he could die at any moment — he can’t strain himself at all. Now we’re afraid for him, because the grief over his son is weighing on his heart,” Safwat said.

“What hurts me most is the little girls, ages 3 and 5. Every time I think of them, I cry. What will they do without a father? How will they manage? Gaza isn’t like Israel or France, where there’s a government that takes care of you. Here, if you don’t have a father, you’re nothing. Every night they used to fall asleep in his arms — and now, from yesterday until the end of their lives, they have no father. What will they do? How can you explain that to them?”

(Emphasis original.)