Palestinian Armed Gangs Looting Humanitarian Aid in Gaza

"This ... highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza."

"⁠The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated: without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive."

Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer, UNRWA

 

"We have been warning a long time ago about the total breakdown of civil order."

"Until four or five months ago, we still had local capacity, people who were escorting the convoy. This has completely gone, which means we are in an environment where local gangs, local families, are struggling among each other to take control of any business or any activities taking place in the south. It has become an impossible environment to operate in."

"But the convoys were looted and there was absolutely nothing to take from the warehouses."

 UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini

 

"It was terrifying."

"But the worst part was we weren't able to deliver the food to the people."

Hazem Isleem, Palestinian truck driver

Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza via an unfamiliar route ordered by Israel, say UNRWA and the World Food Program. CBC

Armed looters ambushed a 100-truck convoy of humanitarian aid being brought into southern Gaza in November. Among the truck drivers was Hazem Isleem whose load of aid was stolen when one of the gunmen broke into his truck, forced him to drive to a field nearby and unload over a ton of flour. By morning of the following day all of the supplies from his truck had been stripped by the gang. And by extension the convoy of just under 100 trucks comprised of UN aid -- meant to feed tens of thousands of Palestinians -- had been stolen.

 

There was nothing new about this, particularly. When humanitarian aid trucks first began entering Gaza to provide aid to Palestinian civilians, Hamas operatives, armed and focused, had comandeered the aid into their possession, stockpiling it for their members and in so doing depriving ordinary Palestinians from food aid meant to be handed out to everyone in need. Following the Hamas example, armed Palestinian thugs formed their own gangs to replicate the actions of the terrorists.

 

Much of the food ended up in open air markets for sale at exorbitant prices; food that was meant to be distributed free of charge to any who needed it, now available at a price for any who could afford to purchase it, in the process enriching those who had taken illegal possession of humanitarian aid for their own profit. Hunger is reported to be widespread in Gaza. 

 

Aid groups in Gaza say the food crisis is continually getting worse and the limited supplies aren’t getting to those who need them. Israel says there is enough food and few people are going hungry.CBC

 

And Israel, conducting a war against terrorist groups which had themselves declared war on Israel by invading southern Israel farming communities and slaughtering 1,200 mostly civilians, enacting horrific scenes of mass rape, mutilation and incinerating entire families in their homes before making off back to Gaza with over 250 infants, elderly, ill people along with a number of Israeli soldiers and foreign farm workers, as hostages, is expected to monitor the humanitarian aid situation to ensure food is delivered to those in aid.

 

In no other conflict has a military responding to aggression against its state and its people been obligated to ensure that the enemy's population is fed; a concern that Hamas itself has spurned, focusing instead on continuing its violence against Israel, complacent in the knowledge that it will always be Israel held to account for those Palestinians that Hamas uses as human shields, not themselves. Palestinian civilians who just incidentally, approve in the vast majority, of the Hamas atrocities committed against Israelis.

 

Armed gangs have taken over from Hamas in the ransacking of humanitarian aid; presumably the stockpiles of aid; medical supplies, food, fuel, that Hamas amassed in their warehouses, closed off from access to the general population represents a surfeit of supplies to keep the terrorists in good health while they continue to bombard Israel with rockets. 

 

 

Truckloads of relief have been piling up at Kerem Shalom, the main border crossing between Israel and southern Gaza while the truckers await a safe window of opportunity to deliver the relief, in fear they will be looted. The initial small-scale efforts on seizing aid now has assumed "systematic, tactical, armed, crime-syndicate looting" by organized groups, according to Georgios Petropoulos, senior UN official based in the southern city of Rafah. "This is just larceny writ large", he commented. 

Well, yes it is; but it is in fact just Palestinians taking advantage of a situation that suits their agenda; sparing little thought for those among them who may be in dire need of aid, yet positioning themselves to deny that aid to the needy, while stockpiling it for their own nefarious purposes of gain through theft. The astronomical prices the gangs demand for the commodities such as flour, oil and other items needed in parts of Gaza represents the incentives the gangs respond to, to the extent that they will shoot to kill anyone who gets in their way.

And while international aid workers take pleasure in accusing Israel of permitting looters to act with impunity, the United Nations will not allow Israeli soldiers to protect the aid convoys. The reason stated, that it would appear to affect their neutrality, is beyond hilarious, given that UNRWA employees consist in part of members of various Palestinian terror groups, Hamas members primarily, some of whom took part in the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed in Israel.

It is true that Israeli forces sought not to intervene by targeting looters other than those affiliated with Hamas or other terror groups. Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military agency that regulates aid to Gaza, noted that Israeli forces now target armed looters attacking convoys. Israeli forces opened fire on looters waylaying trucks in Rafah, forcing their retreat. the UN aid trucks with the pathway cleared, rushed into central Gaza. And then the gangs regrouped and hijacked them on the road, stripping the trucks bare.

 

Trucks pass through as trucks carrying humanitarian aid make their way to the Gaza Strip at the Erez crossing in southern Israel, Oct. 21, 2024. (Janis Laizans/Reuters)