Gaza's aid crisis: Looting, blame and the fight for control

Telegraph

2 days ago

The grainy video shows a flat-bed lorry piled high with cardboard boxes, surrounded by Palestinians.
Standing on top of the boxes, clear enough against the sandy backdrop, are two masked figures, both armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
The IDF published the footage on Tuesday, saying it showed Hamas 'violently looting humanitarian aid' and 'preventing it reaching the civilian population of Gaza'.
Purportedly shot on Friday, the video acts as 'further evidence that Hamas is the primary obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid', the military said.
In the maelstrom of claim and counterclaim over Gaza – where foreign journalists are banned – pictures and footage such as this have taken centre stage in the propaganda battle over what is really going on with the delivery of aid.
It is an argument that entered a new phase this week, after Israel enacted daily pauses in fighting in three highly populated areas, and established 'safe' corridors, following a torrent of international criticism
Hamas says it provides security for aid from looters and gangs.
The UN, WHO, dozens of other NGOs, and several of Israel's key allies (Britain included) say that escalating starvation in the Strip is principally caused by Israel's two-and-a-half-month total blockade up to the second half of May, followed by the lethally ineffective US-backed replacement scheme, coupled with a 'trickle' of NGO aid trucks since then.
Further arresting imagery emerged on Tuesday, this time taken from a satellite and showing what appeared to be hundreds of people swamping aid trucks in Khan Younis.
Gaza's famine was thus 'visible from space'.
One thing all sides agree on is that looting is a widespread problem.
Mobile phone footage taken on top of a truck also showed hundreds swamping an aid vehicle.
Israel claims Hamas is looting the aid in a concerted effort to steal it for its own fighters and to fill its coffers, with a parallel aim of depriving civilians of food, thus enabling 'useful idiots' in the West to accuse the Jewish state of deliberately starving Palestinians.
Hamas denies this. However, given the terror group's track record of using Palestinians as human shields, critics say it is unlikely they will not be seizing the food and supplies for themselves when opportunities arise.
The UN and the international humanitarian community concedes that there is significant looting of its vehicles, including since the IDF improved access on Sunday.
They put this down to a number of factors, including the inevitable instability caused by, they say, Israel's starvation of the civilian population through its military blockade.
The organisations also blame what they describe as the IDF's reluctance to work with them to ensure the safety of their convoys, thus reducing the number of truck deliveries they can even attempt, let alone complete.
In one sense, this current row was triggered, or at least escalated, by the IDF's publication last week of drone footage of a vast open-air storage site just inside the Gaza perimeter at the Karem Shalom Crossing in the south of the enclave.
According to the military, it showed enough aid to fill 1,000 lorries which had been cleared for delivery but left languishing by the UN.
The implication was – and this was briefed off the record by certain officials – that the UN either was not capable or could not be bothered to pass the food, clean water, medical supplies and fuel to ordinary Gazans.
Some anonymous officials even suggested the UN was privately supportive of Hamas.
The UN hit back, saying that, in practice, Israel was placing practical and bureaucratic hurdles in the way of successful deliveries.
Towards the end of last week, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a more detailed explanation of what those hurdles allegedly were.
One of the principal accusations was that, amid a disintegrating situation in the Strip, the IDF was effectively refusing to work with the UN to provide safe routes for its trucks.
Last week, the Times of Israel newspaper quoted one senior Israeli defence official as saying that nearly all of the trucks heading to warehouses of aid organisations and the UN were being looted by Gazan mobs, not Hamas.
Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist renowned for his access to senior officials, reported on the N12 channel that, prior to last week, Israel had, in practice, allowed only one route for the 'safe' transfer of aid – where trucks were routinely looted.
Some have suggested that this looting was in part instigated by a gang led by Yasser abu Shabab, the Bedouin leader of an anti-Hamas gang which has links to organised crime, and which it has been alleged is armed by Israel.
On Tuesday, Al-Araby al-Jadeed, a London-based Arab news outlet, reported that more than half of the Egyptian aid trucks that entered Gaza on Sunday, the first day of the improved access regime, were looted, with their contents sold in local markets.
Out of 130 trucks, 73 were looted on or near the Morag Corridor, a key military axis that separates Rafah from Khan Younis and is controlled by the IDF.
For those who accuse Israel of a deliberate policy of starvation, which Israel strongly denies, this is further evidence.
Images were also released last week of air drops of aid into Gaza.
For the first time, Israel, the country controlling access on the ground, participated, sending cargo aircraft to parachute in emergency aid.
The IDF published impressive footage showing infrared footage of the drops, emphasising its role in 'facilitating humanitarian assistance'.
Inevitably, however, there was a counter-narrative.
'Humiliation', screamed sections of the Israeli press, referring to what they described as Benjamin Netanyahu's volte-face on the ever acrimonious question of aid.