No Aid Trucks Entering Gaza Were Looted by Hamas: Israeli Reports

No Aid Trucks Entering Gaza Were Looted by Hamas: Israeli Reports

No Aid Trucks Entering Gaza Were Looted by Hamas: Israeli Reports
Gaza (Quds News Network)- None of the 110 aid truck looting incidents in Gaza, recorded by the Israeli military in less than a week, were carried out by Hamas, according to a report by Israel’s Channel 12, citing an Israeli military meeting. Instead, the report stated that the looting was carried out by Israeli-backed armed gangs and organized clans operating with the full protection of Israeli forces. The report said an Israeli military establishment held a meeting on Monday to monitor the situation in the Gaza Strip. A senior military official present at the meeting claimed, "There is no famine in Gaza; we are not close to that point." During the meeting, a noteworthy statistic that came up was the number of looting incidents in the Strip: 110 in total — none of them carried out by It also admitted that the Israeli army has repeatedly targeted police units attempting to prevent the looting. This week, the World Food Programme (WFP) also said it found no evidence that Hamas is looting humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip. “No, not at all,” the UN agency’s executive director Cindy McCain told U.S. broadcaster CBS, responding to accusations that Hamas looted 15 WFP trucks on Friday as they entered southern Gaza en route to bakeries. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas,” she added. That day, a police unit was securing the trucks when they encountered a group of looters. As the officers tried to stop the chaos, Israeli warplanes struck the area with eight consecutive missiles, killing six officers and injuring 20 others. The convoy was on its way to a WFP warehouse in Deir al-Balah. Officials in Gaza have stressed that Israel systematically targets aid convoys and blocks medical supplies. They said this is part of a deliberate strategy to cause starvation and chaos in the besieged territory. On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, leading to an unprecedented deterioration of humanitarian conditions, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinains. Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians. Hamas rejects the charge, saying a number of its own members have been killed securing the trucks from armed looters who are being protected by Israeli forces. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months. However, after about 80 days of total blockade and starvation and widespread international outrage, Israel announced about a week ago it will allow a very limited passage of aid trucks into the enclave. Regarding the very limited aid, “this is a drop in the bucket.. we have 50,000 people inside of Gaza that are extremely food insecure and could be on the verge of famine if we don’t help bring them from that,” McCain said. She added, “During the ceasefire, we were getting in 600 trucks a day. Right now, we are getting in mabe a hundred.” The United Nations confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza. UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Friday that Israel had only authorised for Gaza what “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required” to ease the crisis. The limited number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza falls far short of meeting the territory’s vast humanitarian needs and instead serves as a “smokescreen” for Israel to “pretend the siege is over,” according to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, issued a stark warning that 14,000 babies are at risk of dying if humanitarian aid does not reach them—a figure he described as “utterly chilling”.