The Trickle of Food Aid Israel allows you to enter Gaza after almost 22 months of war seized by Palestinians who risk their lives under fire, looted by gangs or redirected under chaotic circumstances instead of reaching the most distressed, the UN agencies, help groups and analysts.
After pictures of malnourished children stabbed an international scream, Aid has begun to be delivered to the territory once again, but on a scale considered unusually inadequate by international organizations.
Every day, AFP Correspondents on Earth look desperate crowds that hurry against food convoys or the places of help fall by Arab and European air forces.
Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in Central Gaza, hastened Palestinians to pallets the parachute from a plane, scattered and tearing packages apart in a cloud of dust.
“Hunger has caused people to turn on each other. People fight against each other with knives,” said Amir Zaqot, who came and sought help, told AFP.
To avoid disturbance, the World Food Program (WFP) drivers have been asked to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves. But to no avail.
“A truck wheel almost shattered my head and I was injured and picked up the bag,” sighed a man and carried a bag of flour on the head in the Zikim area of the northern gaza strip.
‘Really tragic’
Mohammad Abu Taha went to a distribution site near Rafah in the south at dawn to join the queue and reserve his place. He said there were already “thousands waiting, all hungry, on a bag of flour or some rice and lentils”.
“Suddenly we heard shoots ….. there was no way to flee. People started running, pushing and pushing each other, children, women, older,” said the 42-year-old. “The scene was really tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead.”
Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for help since May 27, the majority of the Israeli army, UN said Friday.
The Israeli army denies any targeting and insists that it only shoots “warning shots” when people approach too close to their positions.
International organizations have for several months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points and introduce dangerous routes.
Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army changed “load plans for WFP and mixed cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early without proper security,” said a senior UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the southern part of Gaza at Kerem Shalom Border Crossing, “There are two possible routes to reach our warehouse [in central Gaza]”Said an NGO official who also preferred to remain anonymous.” One is pretty sure, the other is regularly the scene of battle and looting, and that is the one we are forced to take. “
‘Darwinian Experiment’
Bander looting some of the help – often directly attacking warehouses – and derived it to dealers who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts.
“It will be this kind of Darwinian social experiment with the survival of the most beautiful,” said Muhammad Shehada, who visited a fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR).
“People who are the most hungry in the world and do not have the energy have to drive and hunt for a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour,” he said.
Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: “We are in an ultra -capitalist system where dealers and corrupt gangs send children to risk life and limb on distribution points or during looting. It has become a new profession.”
This food is then resold to “those who still can afford it” in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25kg bag of flour can exceed $ 400, he added.
‘Found never proof’
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting assistance provided by the UN, which has provided most of the aid since the beginning of the war, triggered by the Palestinian group’s attack in October 2023.
The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they 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 most important assistance distributing, sidelines of UN -nager.
However, for more than 2 million inhabitants of GAZA, GHF has only four distribution points that the UN describes as a “death trap”.
“Hamas … has stolen the assistance of the Gaza population many times by shooting Palestinians,” claimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
But according to Senior Israeli military officials cited by New York Times On July 26, Israel found “never evidence” that the group “systematically stolen help” from the UN.
The weakening of the war with Israel, which has seen most of his leading leadership killed, Hamas today consists of “basically decentralized autonomous cells,” Shehada said.
Help as workers told AFP That under the ceasefire that preceded the march -blockade helped Gaza police -which includes many Hamas members -to secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum promotes uncertainty and looting.
“The UN agencies and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses over the Gaza Strip,” said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam Police Manager.
“These calls have been largely ignored,” she added.
‘All kinds of criminal activities’
The Israeli army is also accused of equipping Palestinian criminal networks in his fight against Hamas and for giving them the opportunity to loot help.
“The real theft of assistance since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the awake of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate near Kerem Shalom Crossing Point to Gaza,” Jonathan Whitttall, Palestinian territories to the UN Humanitarian Office (OCHA), told Reports in May.
According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the popular forces consisting of members of a Bedouin State led by Yasser Abu Shabab, operates in the southern region under Israeli control.
The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area, which is widely accused of having the looting of aid cars”.
The Israeli authorities even acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs against Hamas without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab.
Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian study forum at Moshe Dayan Center for Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang members were involved in “all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling and similar things”.
“None of this can happen in Gaza without approval, at least tacitly, by the Israeli army,” said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named.
