How Gaza's aid sites have morphed into Israel's cruellest form of psychological torture

Storming aid lorries has become a way for Palestinians to assert a sense of agency in a world ruled by helplessness and futility

A man reacts as medics transport victims of reported Israeli strikes on members of Palestinian aid security committees in northern Gaza on 13 August 2025 (Bashar Taleb/AFP)

A man reacts after Israeli strikes near an aid site in northern Gaza on 13 August 2025 (Bashar Taleb/AFP)

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The Zikim, Netzarim and Morag “aid corridors” have become Israel’s psychological laboratories for collective human experimentation.

Within this framework, logic collapses, personal values disintegrate, and human beings are reshaped - but only after being psychologically dismantled.

An Israeli tank climbs a sandy ridge overlooking a flat open area. Beyond it lies another sandy mound, used by civilians as a last refuge from the relentless, indiscriminate gunfire that only intensifies as the aid lorries begin to move away from the military vehicles.

In that moment, the final thread connecting a person to their own sense of self snaps. Natural human responses shut down. The human being becomes something else; something unfamiliar. Crowds surge forward. Some fall, others are killed. No one stops. It is a race against death.

The air is filled with dust, so thick you can barely see ahead. The deafening noise of gunfire rises above all else. People run towards the aid lorries, which appear minuscule amid the frenzy surrounding them.

Those who fall are trampled underfoot or have their skulls crushed by the tyres. If they are fortunate, only their legs are broken.

The scene resembles a sped-up video of a vertebrate decomposing, its body reduced to clean bone in an instant. This is how the lorries are swallowed, becoming hollow frames within minutes.

These scenes are not just horrifying. They are also a rare and complex field for understanding human behaviour. What is being done to us? What drives us to such a state? And how is it that human beings, under certain conditions, can be stripped of all instinctive defences and absorbed into such chaotic, herd-like conduct?

The hunger economy

At first glance, hunger alone may seem sufficient to explain the situation. But hunger is often only the initial spark; over time, chaos can become a primary market resource. A new form of labour emerges, with distinct categories of workers.

At the top are the professionals, known locally as the “sugar-and-Nutella” units - the fastest, most efficient and most organised. They seize the best and most valuable items.

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Then come those who have to work to secure their own food, or to sell it to meet other needs. Increasingly, people have begun to recognise the minimal returns of their small businesses in comparison with what can be gained by chasing down aid. More and more people are being drawn in by this phenomenon.

Collective trauma - a psychological condition affecting populations exposed to overwhelming and terrifying events such as bombardment, mutilation, bloodshed, starvation and deprivation - under conditions of total helplessness has well-documented effects. Many develop addictive behaviours as coping mechanisms.

We are witnessing a reshaping of the individual, of society, of the market, and of the social fabric that binds people together

In this context, storming the aid lorries - legitimised by the occupying power as the only option for “quelling hunger”, in line with its security interests - ceases to be merely a desperate act. It becomes a compulsive pattern, a way of seeking traces of oneself in a world ruled by helplessness and futility.

Obtaining aid becomes the only means by which individuals can feel their own presence, even if through destructive and chaotic avenues.

The food basket, or flour sack, is no longer merely a source of physical nourishment. It becomes a form of psychological gratification that offers reassurance; a way to assert status, social hierarchy and a sense of agency within one’s environment.

A desire, even a compulsion, to repeat the experience takes hold - again and again - despite the individual already having secured food and a temporary sense of safety. The drive is not soothed. On the contrary, it intensifies.

Reward mechanisms

Those who gather along aid routes, sometimes dryly referred to as “Zikim workers”, can be roughly divided into two groups: the victorious, who usually succeed in obtaining food, and those who rely on luck, saying things like: “It’s not my skill, it’s just God’s favour.” As such, there are two distinct emotional patterns related to psychological rewards.

Routine feelings of victory are tied to the brain’s reward system, where dopamine is released in response to achievement or success. This acts as a further incentive, encouraging the repetition of behaviours and reinforcing them into a routine.

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Feelings of random or intermittent rewards, as with gambling, can lead to even higher levels of dopamine. The brain reacts more intensely to unexpected success. These emotional responses are closely linked with addictive behaviours, whereby a person develops a compulsion to repeat the action, even in the absence of tangible results.

The danger lies in how such feelings can erode one’s resistance to chaotic situations.

In Gaza, people live on the edge of catastrophe. Oppression strikes from every direction. Within this context, individuals often experience the aid corridors as a space for physical and emotional release. This process can involve strenuous exertion, such as walking many kilometres to reach the convoys, along with crowding, jostling and potential physical confrontations.

Violence becomes another face of this chaos - a primitive method of reclaiming control; a fleeting but tangible sense of presence in a world otherwise defined by absence and futility.

Collective behaviour

In socially embedded contexts, such as among extended families, neighbourhood groups, circles of friends, shelters or displacement camps, individuals often find it difficult to resist conforming to the collective. Even when such behaviours come into conflict with personal convictions, they spread like a contagion. In this setting, going to the aid sites becomes normalised, because everyone else is doing the same thing.

The other side of this phenomenon involves the fear of missing out - a widely recognised behavioural tendency, particularly visible in financial markets, where a surge in demand is driven by the belief that failing to act now means losing the opportunity forever.

This dynamic is heightened on days when fewer people venture out, whether due to psychological fatigue or other factors, and the aid corridors become a golden opportunity for those who do show up. Those who miss out on the experience regret, while stories of individual successes become exaggerated, serving as mobilisation tools and fuelling a flood of people to the aid sites the next day.

We are witnessing a reshaping of the individual, of society, of the market, and of the social fabric that binds people together. What remains of meaningful human agency is being dissolved, with Palestinians left to face uncertain fates.

In this open-air theatre, Israel is carrying out a systematic policy of dismantling individuals and structures alike, paving the way for a final phase - one of collective submission, of psychological dependence on the oppressor, and of collapsed trust in society itself.

This, in turn, paves the way for a new order in which people attach their hopes to whoever appears stronger, more capable, more able to feed them. We will by then have become pliable clay, to be shaped by Israel at will or discarded, left as broken human wreckage under the control of warlords and looters.

This is the conclusion to which my personal experiences at Zikim have led me. It is my hope that by writing this, I can draw attention to the catastrophic reality unfolding in Gaza - a reality too often reduced to simplistic and superficial images that keep us from asking deeper questions, or seeking the necessary answers.

What can we do? How do we stop this catastrophe?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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How Gaza's aid sites have morphed into Israel's cruellest form of psychological torture

How Gaza's aid sites have morphed into Israel's cruellest form of psychological torture