Battle over trickle of aid into Gaza as armed gangs intercept trucks carrying supplies ...Middle East

Criminal gangs and desperate civilians looted some of the first aid trucks that trickled into Gaza after an 11-week blockade, aid workers and residents said.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that 15 of its trucks were looted on Thursday night on their way to bakeries in southern Gaza and appealed for protection.

“Hunger, desperation, and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming, is contributing to rising insecurity,” the agency said.

“WFP cannot safely operate under a distribution system that limits the number of bakeries and sites where Gaza’s population can access food.”

UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator Tom Fletcher acknowledged some losses and cited a “no man’s land” beyond the Kerem Shalom crossing where deliveries are vulnerable.

Fletcher suggested “starving, desperate people” were responsible, but added that gangs were also a threat. Gaza residents have reported attacks on aid trucks by armed criminals.

More than 100 trucks carrying essential supplies have crossed into Gaza this week, as Israel softened a blockade in place since 2 March under pressure from allies.

But WFP chief Cindy McCain described this as a “tiny drop in the bucket” and said the agency had enough food to feed two million Gazans for two months waiting for permission to cross the border.

Motasem Dalloul, a journalist in Gaza, said a group of thieves and gangsters…intercepted a convoy and attempted to steal the aid” on Thursday night.

Volunteers from the so-called “popular committees” – grassroots movements that established to organise resistance against Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip – including members of prominent local tribes, “rushed to the area to prevent the thieves from stealing the aid,” said Dalloul.

He claimed that the Israeli military has targeted its strikes at the security officers protecting aid supplies – volunteers belonging to the Hamas government’s civilian police force.

“The Israelis targeted them several times,” Dalloul said, adding that the looting gangs are “protected by Israeli occupation forces”.

The Hamas government’s media office claimed on Friday that six of its security officers were killed by Israeli strikes while guarding aid, and accused Israel of “operating in a systematic way to enable looting the aid and medicine trucks”.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military did not comment on the claims. Israel has previously acknowledged strikes targeting the Hamas civilian police guarding aid.

Earlier this week, a group of tribal leaders in Gaza accused Israel of allowing gangs to plunder aid and preventing attempts to provide security for convoys, alleging this was part of a strategy of forced displacement.

Aid workers have previously accused Israel of turning a blind eye to organised crime targeting aid.

Giorgios Petropolous, head of the UN aid coordination office in Gaza, said in December: “Continued tolerance by the IDF of unacceptable amounts of looting of areas that are ostensibly and de facto under their military control.”

Palestinian civilians in north Gaza say they are not receiving aid (Photo: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu/Getty)

Muhammed Shehada, a Gazan political analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, accused Israel of creating a “manufactured crisis” around looting in order to legitimise a controversial US-Israeli plan for aid hubs guarded by US mercenaries that has been rejected by the UN, Red Cross, and aid groups.

The plan, led by the newly-created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, staffed by former CIA and Blackwater personnel, is expected to be in place by the end of the month with satellite images showing work underway at several sites.

But critics say the scheme could force mass displacement of civilians from the north to the south where the sites are located, and expose recipients to long and dangerous journeys.

Israel claims an alternative mode of aid distribution is necessary due to Hamas stealing large quantities of aid but has not provided evidence, and the UN denies this.

‘No aid is reaching us in northern Gaza’

Palestinians in northern Gaza told The i Paper that no aid is reaching the area and report ongoing efforts to displace them.

Beesan Nateel, an author and researcher at the Tamer Institute for Community Education, based in Gaza City, said: “We don’t have enough flour, and even canned food is starting to run out.

“The [Israeli military] are slowly pushing us out. They carry out random bombings and tell us to evacuate. Leaflets threaten us not to remain in our homes. But there’s nothing we can do about it. So we are still staying where we are.

“Many people are on the streets with no food. They have no place to sleep. They are hungry and exposed to danger.”

Ahmed Matar, also based in north Gaza, said his family have been ordered to evacuate.

“We are now in a dangerous area. We do not know where to go,” he said.

Israel is escalating an offensive in Gaza dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots”, with thousands more soldiers to be deployed in the coming days, state broadcaster Kan News reported.

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The expanded operation has “the aim of conquering new territories and remaining in them, along with extensive evacuation of the population to the south of the Strip,” the network reported.

Netanyahu said this week that Israel would control “all of Gaza” after this offensive, and the war would not end before Israel “carries out the Trump plan,” referring to the US President’s proposal in February to transfer the population of Gaza abroad.

Yaakov Amidror, a former IDF general who also served as an advisor to Netanyahu and is now a military analyst, told The i Paper that the army was preparing for large-scale, long term operations in the north and civilians should move south.

“We don’t want civilians on the battlefield,” he said, adding “for those who stay in the north it will be very hard for them to get food.”

But Amidror rejected criticism that this intended mass displacement amounted to ethnic cleansing, as he argued civilians would eventually be allowed to return, despite Netanyahu’s endorsement of Trump’s proposal for them to be transferred abroad.

“It will take some time to clean the north, and then the civilians can come back,” he said.

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