Thousands of pallets of humanitarian supplies, ranging from flour and blankets to canned food, are sitting idle at the Gaza border, according to The NY Post, as relief organizations hesitate to send trucks due to fears that Hamas terrorists and local criminals will loot the deliveries.
The aid, which has already been inspected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) upon its arrival from Jordan, Egypt, and the West Bank, is intended for Palestinian civilians. However, the responsibility for distributing the aid lies with international organizations, which have struggled to ensure its safe passage into Gaza.
The journey from the Israel-Gaza border to the areas where the aid is needed in central and northern Gaza is long and fraught with danger. It is frequently targeted by criminals.
Each day, at least one driver in Gaza is shot by looters who stop aid trucks to steal their contents for profit, an IDF spokesperson told The NY Post.
Since the beginning of December, over 1,100 trucks have entered Gaza, according to Colonel Abdullah Halabi, the IDF’s head of coordination and liaison for Gaza. However, it remains unclear how many of these trucks reached their intended destinations.
On December 1, the United Nations Relief Workers Agency (UNRWA) announced that it had suspended aid deliveries through the Kerem Shalom crossing due to the hijacking of trucks by armed gangs.
“The road out of this crossing has not been safe for months,” the agency stated. “The delivery of humanitarian aid must never be dangerous or turn into an ordeal.”
Rather than addressing the rampant violence, bolstering its security measures, or collaborating with other groups to ensure aid gets to where it’s needed, UNRWA blamed Israel for the situation. They cited Israel’s “ongoing siege, political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid, lack of safety on aid routes, and targeting of local police.”
The agency also claimed that Israel was responsible for protecting aid workers and supplies in Gaza and called for a ceasefire that would ensure “the delivery of safe and uninterrupted aid to people in need.”
Israel has rejected these allegations and invited reporters to visit the border last week to observe the aid bottleneck caused by a shortage of drivers.
During the Post’s visit, gunfire and shelling could be heard in the distance.
“From the Israeli perspective, there is no limit to the trucks coming into Gaza. The main obstacle, the main challenge, is the international community’s capabilities [to conduct] distribution,” said Halabi.
“Israel doesn’t have any intention to stop the humanitarian aid to Gaza; it’s the opposite.”
The IDF does not police Gaza as it focuses on eliminating the remnants of Hamas in the area, and Israeli officials argue that such a move would not be welcomed by Palestinians.
Once the aid crosses into Gaza and is cleared by the IDF, it is no longer the IDF’s responsibility to ensure its safe distribution, as confirmed by IDF representatives to The Post.
To facilitate the safe transfer of aid, Israel opened the Philadelphi corridor earlier this month, allowing for the safe passage of 300 trucks over a 10-day period.
“We bring them more roads to bring the cargo. We escort them from the Philadelphi road — this is in the IDF’s control — we escort them until Al Rashid, which is the road next to the beach,” an IDF colonel explained to The Post in Kerem Shalom.
After this, however, drivers are left to fend for themselves in terms of protection.
“There are criminal families that want to take all the cargo and sell it and make a business out of this,” the colonel said. “As you see right now in Gaza, except for the driver of the truck and something like this, you don’t have a lot of work. So this is the only option to make money.”
“Now all the humanitarian aid is worth a lot of money,” he added.
Other organizations, such as UNICEF, World Central Kitchen, and Save the Children, have been able to get aid through by negotiating with looters, the colonel continued.
“Every truck that succeeds in getting out of here, most of them had the chance to succeed because they made deals with the looters,” he explained. “They pay if they have stuff that is really necessary for the organization, such as medical supplies, so they prefer to pay cash.”
But UNRWA and other agencies, including the World Food Program, have been unable to move their cargo, seemingly unwilling to negotiate with the looters, the colonel stated.
As a result, aid that these organizations have already paid for, cleared through IDF entry points, and is ready for delivery, continues to sit at the border, awaiting a solution to the widespread crime that is preventing it from reaching those in Gaza who desperately need it.
{Matzav.com}