Israel ‘arming criminal gangs to attack Gaza aid trucks’

Attacks taking place in full view of occupation forces to deprive Palestinians of even the tiny amount of aid reaching Gaza

Israel’s occupation regime is arming criminal gangs to attack the few aid trucks that it allows into Gaza, reducing to near-zero the actual aid that reaches the two million Palestinians Israel is attempting to starve into submission or to death. These armed gangs are attacking in full view of Israeli occupation forces, who simply stand by and watch, in an area around a kilometer from the Kerem Shalom aid crossing that they call ‘the looting zone’ – and if trucks try to take a safer route, occupation troops prevent them.

Western media and politicians have repeatedly attempted to blame lack of aid attack aid-trucks in areas on ‘looting’ to excuse Israel for the famine it is imposing on millions of Palestinian civilians, including around 400,000 people facing absolute starvation in northern Gaza, which has been completely cut off from the rest of the ‘strip’, whom Israel has designated as terrorists and therefore legitimate targets for murder. But in reality, Israel has armed and funded the looting gangs, clearly intending them to allow it to pretend to be at arm’s length from the war crime.

This has been ignored, as so often, by western media. However, Israeli media – as with the fact that the Israeli military killed most of the Israeli civilians who died on 7 October last year – are freely discussing it. Haaretz wrote:

[The looting zone] is where most of the looting of aid trucks takes place. Yet the area is under full control of the IDF. Truck drivers and officials from international aid organizations charge that the soldiers can see the attacks on the convoys, yet do nothing.

Senior defense officials said recently that the heads of the defense establishment are aware of the problem, and have also discussed it with the government. The armed attacks take place just a few hundred meters away from Israeli troops. Some aid groups say attacked truck drivers have even sought help from the IDF, but the army has refused to intervene. Moreover, they say, the army bars them from taking alternate roads that are considered safer.

But Israel is doing much more than merely allowing the looting. It has been arming the gangs for months with western weapons that local resistance groups don’t use, as Muhammad Shehada of human rights group EuroMed Monitor pointed out:

The Haaretz report continues, noting the absence of civil police in Gaza – but failing to mention that this is because they have been targeted and bombed relentlessly by Israel as part of its campaign to induce complete social collapse:

The sources in international aid organizations working in the enclave told Haaretz that the armed men have blocked a large portion of the aid shipments entering Gaza through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing. The looting is systematic, they said, yet the IDF has turned a blind eye. And since some of the aid groups refuse to pay protection money, the aid often ends up sitting in warehouses that are under Israeli army control.

The sources say the looting of the convoys reflects the complete anarchy that prevails in Gaza due to the lack of any functioning civilian government. In several cases, they add, the last remnants of the local police forces tried to take action against the looters, but were attacked by Israeli troops, who view them as part of Harnos.

Defense officials confirmed that the IDF is aware of the problem. They said that at one point, the government had even considered making the clans to which the armed men belong responsible for distributing aid to Gaza’s residents, even though some of the clans’ members are involved in terrorism, and some are even affiliated with extremist organizations like the Islamic State.

Israeli government aid agency COGAT claimed as recently as yesterday that the delay is caused by UN aid agencies failing to collect the supplies and take them into Gaza:

Israel has banned UNRWA, the UN’s main aid agency for Palestinians, from operating in Palestine and has designated it a terrorist group after smearing it all year and killing hundreds of its staff and bombing its HQ.

However, even without the Israel-funded looting, aid has been reduced to a trickle – in part because of attacks by occupation forces and settlers on aid trucks and on distribution points within Gaza that have murdered hundreds of desperate people trying to find food.

Shehada again on the latest tactic Israel is using to try to wash its hands of its actions:

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