Amid the near-daily killing of aid seekers around the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) aid sites, academic Pietro Stefanini says the US and Israel are deliberately weaponising humanitarian assistance to serve military and strategic objectives, bypassing established aid channels.

“There is this weaponisation of aid distribution as a tool of genocide, which is done specifically to advance strategic war aims,” Stefanini, a tutor of history and politics at the University of Edinburgh, told Al Jazeera.

Stefanini says existing humanitarian organisations such as UNRWA and the World Food Programme have refused to work with the GHF system because they are trying “to use aid to coerce the displacement of Palestinians from one area of Gaza’s territory to another”.

“Aid is intentionally limited to perpetuate scarcity and inflict starvation, since what the GHF provides does not meet the need of an intense food supply crisis,” he added.