Aid worker says promised safety changes in Gaza remain unimplemented

Seven months after an Israeli airstrike killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza, including Australian Zomi Frankcom, the safety systems meant to prevent such deaths remain broken. Tess Ingram, an Australian aid worker who regularly travels into Gaza, knows this firsthand. Just one week after Frankcom died on April 1, Ingram was inside a UNICEF convoy when it came under fire. She has continued working there since, delivering supplies to some of the world's most vulnerable people, but the promised changes—the coordination improvements, the safety protocols—have not materialized in any meaningful way.

The April 1 attack was supposed to be a turning point. An Australian government review, released in late July and led by Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, found that the strike was not deliberately aimed at the aid workers but resulted from catastrophic failures in Israeli military procedure and situational awareness. The report identified a breakdown in the system designed to keep humanitarian convoys safe—what aid workers call "deconfliction," the practice of notifying military forces about where aid operations are happening so they won't be mistaken for hostile activity. In this case, the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza had not been told that the WCK convoy had local security present, which apparently gave the appearance of a Hamas presence. The IDF's controls failed. Confirmation bias took hold. Seven people died.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong called the deaths inexcusable and promised the Australian government would press for accountability and proper protections. But Ingram's experience suggests that promise has not translated into action on the ground. She describes the frustration of sitting in trucks loaded with food and supplies, knowing exactly where they need to go, knowing the people who need them—women and children facing desperate circumstances—and being unable to move because of delays, danger, and restrictions imposed by a system that still does not work. Deconfliction functions in other conflicts around the world, she points out. There is no technical reason it cannot work in Gaza. The barrier is not capability; it is implementation.

The danger has not stopped. Just over a week before Ingram spoke to journalists, another UNICEF convoy came under fire. These are not isolated incidents, she emphasizes. They are evidence that the changes promised after Frankcom's death have not been put in place effectively enough to ensure anyone's safety. Yet Ingram and her colleagues continue the work. She acknowledges the weight of it—the awareness that the deconfliction system is not functioning properly, that Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be an aid worker, that harm could come at any moment. But the humanitarian need outweighs the risk. The job must be done.

What remains unclear is whether the Israeli government will implement the changes the Binskin report recommended, or whether aid workers will continue operating in a system that has already failed them once and shows signs of failing again. Wong has pledged continued pressure for accountability and a ceasefire. But for Ingram and others like her, the real measure of accountability is not an apology or a review—it is whether the next convoy makes it through safely, and the one after that, and whether the supplies in those trucks actually reach the people waiting for them.