The drop of food aid that Israel allows to enter Gaza after almost 22 months of war is seized by the Palestinians who risk their lives under fire, looted by gangs or deviants in chaotic circumstances instead of reaching the most needy, the United Nations agencies, help groups and analysts say.
After the images of malnourished children fueled an international protest, the aid has begun to be delivered to the territory once again, but on a scale considered unfortunately insufficient by international organizations.
Daily, AFP The correspondents on the ground see desperate multitude of food convoys or the help sites fallen by the Arab and European Air Forces.
On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in the center of Gaza, the Demacradated Palestinians rushed to paratanes of a plane, pushing and tearing packages with each other in a cloud of dust.
“Hunger has led people to turn together. People are fighting each other with knives,” said Amir Zaqot, who came for help AFP.
To avoid disturbances, the drivers of the World Food Program (WFP) have received instructions to stop before their planned destination and let people help themselves. But it was in vain.
“A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and injured me recovering the bag,” a man sighed, carrying a flour bag in his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern strip of Northern Gaza.
‘Truly tragic’
Mohammad Abu Taha went to a distribution site near Rafah in the south at dawn to join the tail and reserve his place. He said there were already “thousands of people waiting, all hungry, for a flour bag or some rice and lentils.”
“Suddenly, we listened to shots ….. there was no way to escape. People began to run, pushing and pushing, children, women, elders,” said the 42 -year -old man. “The scene was really tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead.”
Almost 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while they wait for help since May 27, the majority of the Israeli army, the UN said Friday.
The Israeli army denies any orientation, insisting that it only shoots “warning shots” when people get too close to their positions.
International organizations have condemned for months the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on the distribution of help in Gaza, including the denial of issuing border crossing permits, slow authorization of customs, limited access points and imposing dangerous routes.
On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army “changed the load plans for the PMA, mixing the load unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without adequate security,” said a UN senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In southern Gaza, at the crossroads of Kerem Shalom, “there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses [in central Gaza]”said an NGO official, who also preferred to remain anonymous.” One is quite safe, the other is regularly fighting and looting scene, and that is the one we were forced to take. “
‘Darwinian experiment’
Gangs loot part of the aid, which often attack the warehouses directly, and divert it to merchants who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several sources and humanitarian experts.
“It becomes this type of Darwinian social experiment of the most suitable survival,” said Muhammad Shehada, visiting a member of the European Foreign Affairs Council (ECFR).
“People who are the most famous in the world and do not have energy must run and pursue after a truck and wait hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a meal bag,” he said.
Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for doctors without borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: “We are in an ultracapitalist system, where merchants and corrupt gangs send children to life and limb at the distribution points or during looting. It has become a new profession.”
Then this meal is revited to “those who can still pay it” in the markets of the city of Gaza, where the price of a 25 kg flour bag can exceed $ 400, he added.
‘Never found test’
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering most of the aid since the beginning of the war caused by the October 2023 attack of the Palestinian Group.
The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organization supported by Israel and the United States, which has become the main aid distributor, accelerating the agencies.
However, for more than 2 million inhabitants of Gaza, the GHF has only four distribution points, which the UN describes as a “death trap.”
“Hamas … has been stealing help from the population of Gaza many times when shooting the Palestinians,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
But according to Israeli military officers cited by the New York Times On July 26, Israel “never found proof” that the group had “systematically stole the help” of the UN.
Weakened by the war with Israel, who has seen most of his senior leadership murdered, Hamas today is composed of “basically decentralized autonomous cells,” said Shehada.
Help workers told him AFP That during the high the fire that preceded the March block, the Gaza Police, which includes many Hamas members, helped ensure humanitarian convoys, but that the current void was promoting insecurity and looting.
“UN agencies and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly asked the Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect the aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses through the Gaza Strip,” Bushra Khalidi, a policy leader in Oxfam, said.
“These calls have been largely ignored,” he added.
‘All kinds of criminal activities’
The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped the Palestinian criminal networks in their fight against Hamas and allowing them to loot help.
“The true theft of help since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the surveillance of Israeli forces, and were allowed to operate near the Kerem Sharem cross point in Gaza,” he told Jonathan Whittall, head of Palestinian territories of the Office of the Office of Unan Humanitaria (Ocha), to the reporters in May.
According to reports from Israeli and Palestinian media, an armed group called the popular forces, composed of members of a Beduine tribe directed by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control.
The ECFR describes Abu Shabab how to lead a “criminal gang that operates in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting help trucks.”
The Israeli authorities themselves recognized in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly appointing that directed by Abu Shabab.
Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of the University of Tel Aviv, said that many of the gang members were involved in “all kinds of criminal activities, smuggling of drugs and things like that.”
“None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army,” said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be appointed.
