Italy’s ‘Food for Gaza’ is an empty front for genocide

“Food for Gaza,” the program Tajani is boasting about, is coordinated with Israel: it does not respond to humanitarian needs but activates only when Tel Aviv gives the green light.

When Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani launched “Food for Gaza” on March 11, 2024, il manifesto’s reporter had just returned from a trip to the Rafah crossing, along with a convoy of Italian NGOs and parliamentarians. Along the narrow strip of land separating life from death, thousands of trucks were stuck in place, full of food, medicine and tents that could have brought relief to an entire population.

“Food for Gaza” was launched in the midst of a delegitimization campaign – initiated by Israeli leadership – against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), and Tajani’s Italy jumped eagerly on that bandwagon alongside other Western chancelleries. After cutting funds to the only entity capable of managing the humanitarian emergency, Rome replaced actual support for a people under genocide with an empty front.

Since then, as one can read on the Ministry’s website, “Food for Gaza” has spent heavily, at least on paper, with a budget of €40 million (of which about €30 million spent so far) divided into three areas of intervention: humanitarian aid, reception and medical care, and educational programs. That is, the provision of life-saving aid to Gaza and the evacuation of Palestinian patients and students – of which Tajani once again boasted on Tuesday.

Let’s start with the aid. According to the Foreign Ministry, Italy has sent 2,400 tons of food to Gaza, including 2,000 tons of flour via the World Food Programme (WFP), 200 tons of foodstuffs, 100 tons via nine airdrops, and 60 tons of animal feed. These numbers are minuscule compared to the actual needs: “2,400 tons is equivalent to 100 trucks,” explains Paolo Pezzati, aid worker and representative of AOI, the Association of Italian Organizations that organized the convoys to Rafah. “Every day, Gaza would need at least 600 trucks of aid. In two years, Rome has sent one-sixth of the need for a single day.”

International NGOs alone have 420,000 pallets of aid (tents, food, hygiene kits, etc.) waiting at the crossings: each pallet weighs an average of 100 kg. “They could cover an area of 75 hectares, 101 soccer fields,” adds Pezzati. “In 2024, each NGO brought in nine to ten trucks per shipment, with an average of ten shipments per year for each of them: the resources put in by the Italian government were equal to the resources put in by a single NGO.”

The Foreign Ministry can, of course, object that those 2,400 tons are just a part of what was paid by the €40 million. One must also count the nine food airdrops, which drew so much criticism during the summer: they fell in random areas, killed people, and above all were a drop in the ocean, for an estimated cost (per journalistic investigations) of €250,000-400,000 per drop.

A single truck can deliver the equivalent of 30 airdrops: 18,000 airdrops would be needed to cover Gaza’s daily needs (600 trucks). Instead of pressuring Israel to unblock the crossings, which are hermetically sealed, a dangerous and completely ineffective route was preferred. And therein lies the political point of the form of engagement chosen by Italy: alignment with Israeli policies and the dismantling of the cooperation network that had operated in Gaza for years.

“While 40 million is a significant number,” continues Pezzati, “the problem is the approach: distributing funds by bypassing NGOs and the UNRWA and relying on UN agencies that had little to do with humanitarian assistance in the region.” Immediately after October 7, Rome cut off funding to NGOs active in Gaza: “Those still present operate with their own funds from private donations or foreign institutions. In Palestine, the cooperation sector is at risk of collapse. After decades spent building it, it’s at risk of disappearing in a few months.”

With not a single euro allocated for 2024 and 2025, the government is now putting on a show of remedying the situation: sources within the field of Italian international cooperation report the upcoming issue of a UNDP (UN Development Programme) call for applications from Italian NGOs, financed by Rome with three million euros gross. “It’s an absurd procedure,” our source explains. “The Ministry is investing scraps and bypassing its own Agency for Development Cooperation.”

“Food for Gaza,” the program Tajani is boasting about, is coordinated with Israel: it does not respond to humanitarian needs but activates only when Tel Aviv gives the green light. It is Israel that decides what enters and who leaves. And who gets to leave? This brings us to the last claimed line items for those €40 million: the evacuations of the sick and students to Italy, which – as the Minister insistently recalled – is number one in the world for welcoming over 1,500 Palestinians (259 sick people and their families).

Tajani had photo ops with some of them at the airport; afterward, many disappeared from the government’s radar: taken in by the third sector, ending up in CAS (Reception Centers) without psychological or material support, deprived of any preferential channels to access international protection, as was done for Ukrainians. On Tuesday came the news of an emergency ruling from the Court of Rome that ordered the Foreign Ministry to provide entry visas to a Palestinian family that needs to get to Como.

Widad Tamimi has written extensively about Gazan students in this newspaper. She has told of young people abandoned in a maze of insane bureaucratic procedures in the context of devastation found in Gaza, or forced to choose between their children and studying abroad. She has told of artists excluded from evacuation plans. In some cases, after much pressure, the government applied a band-aid. But to date, 110 students who won IUPALS scholarships to study in Italy are frozen in an endless wait. Italy has not gotten anyone out since December.

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