Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on Friday for a controversial Israel- and US-backed relief effort in Gaza to be halted, branding it “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”.The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began operating last month, “is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies”, MSF said in a statement.It said more than 500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip while seeking food in recent weeks.Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of that the entire population of the occupied Palestinian territory is at risk of famine.The United Nations sas Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law.The densely populated Gaza Strip has been largely flattened by Israeli bombing since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, using GHF — backed by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter — to run operations.The latter have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food.There are also concerns about the neutrality of GHF, officially a private group with opaque funding. The UN and major aid groups have refused to work with it, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals and that it violates basic humanitarian principles.The Gaza health ministry says that since late May, nearly 550 people have been killed near aid centres while seeking scarce food supplies. “With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled,” MSF said.- Surge in gunshot wounds -GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.On Tuesday, the United Nations condemned what it said was Israel’s “weaponisation of food” in Gaza and called it a war crime.MSF said the way GHF distributes food aid supplies “forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies”. “These sites hinder women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities from accessing aid, and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process,” it said.Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, said the four sites were all under the full control of Israeli forces, surrounded by watch points and barbed wire.”If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot,” he said in the statement.”If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’ — they get shot.”MSF said that its teams in Gaza were seeing patients every day who had been killed or wounded trying to get food at one of the sites.It pointed to “a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds”.MSF urged “the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical and humanitarian supplies and to revert to the pre-existing principled humanitarian system coordinated by the UN”.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has re-emerged after the war with Israel but faces a struggle to maintain the authority he has wielded over the Islamic republic in over three-and-a-half decades of rule, analysts say.After days of silence, Khamenei appeared on Thursday in a video address to proclaim “victory” and prove he is still alive following the 12-day conflict with Israel which ended with a truce earlier this week.But Khamenei, appointed Iran’s number one and spiritual leader for life in 1989, spoke softly and hoarsely in the address, without the charismatic oratory for which he is known.Whereas his regular interventions before the war usually took place in public in front of an audience, this message was filmed against a plain backdrop of curtains and a picture of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.This may indicate he could still be in hiding after Israel refused to rule out seeking to assassinate him.On Thursday, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that the military would have killed Khamenei during the war if the opportunity had presented itself.”If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan, adding that the military had “searched a lot”.But in the end, the conflict did not trigger the removal of the system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.Still, it enabled Israel to demonstrate military superiority and deep intelligence penetration of Iran by killing key members of Khamenei’s inner circle in targeted strikes.The war was also the latest in a series of setbacks over the last year for Khamenei.These include the downgrading of pro-Tehran militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah in conflicts with Israel and the fall of Iran’s ally in Syria Bashar al-Assad, against the background of economic crisis and energy shortages at home.”At this time, the regime does not seem to be on the verge of falling but it is certainly more vulnerable than it has been since the early years after the revolution,” said Thomas Juneau, professor at the University of Ottawa.- ‘Diminished figure’ -“The authority of the supreme leader has therefore certainly been undermined,” Juneau told AFP.”Even though his position remains secure, in that there is unlikely to be a direct challenge to his rule for now, he has lost credibility and bears direct responsibility for the Islamic republic’s major losses.”Khamenei is 86 and suffers the effects of a 1981 assassination attempt in Tehran which paralysed his right arm, a disability he has never made any attempt to hide.But discussion of succession has remained taboo in Iran, even if Western analysts have long eyed his son Mojtaba as a possible — but far from inevitable — contender.Arash Azizi, visiting fellow at Boston University, said Khamenei looked “frail and weak” in his televised message in “a far cry from the grand orator we know”.”It’s clear that he is a diminished figure, no longer authoritative and a shadow of his former self,” he said.”Power in Tehran is already passing to different institutions and factions and the battle for his succession will only intensify in the coming period.”Khamenei has come through crises before, using the state’s levers of repression, most recently during the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd detained for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women.Rights activists say hundreds of people have been arrested in a new crackdown in the wake of the conflict.- ‘Sidelined’? -The New York Times and Iran International, a Persian-language television channel based outside Iran that is critical of the authorities, have said Khamenei spent the war in a bunker avoiding use of digital communication for fear of being tracked and assassinated.Iran International reported that Khamenei was not even involved in the discussions that led to the truce which were handled by the national security council and President Masoud Pezeshkian. There has been no confirmation of this claim.Jason Brodsky, policy director at the US-based United Against Nuclear Iran, said Khamenei appeared “frail and hoarse” and also “detached from reality” in insisting that Iran’s nuclear programme did not suffer significant damage.”Nevertheless, I remain sceptical of the theories that Khamenei has been sidelined,” he told AFP.”I have no doubt the war will prompt a debate within the Islamic Republic’s political elite as to how best to rebuild the system’s capabilities, but in the end, the buck has always stopped with Khamenei,” he said.