As gaza reels from war and blockade food aid falls short for the hungriest

As gaza reels from war and blockade food aid falls short for the hungriest

Supplies entering Gaza is often looted, diverted, or seized before reaching those most in need; residents say hunger has driven people to turn on each other with some resorting to knife fights; Israel denies targeting civilians but imposes restrictions, while gangs resell aid at exorbitant prices.

The trickle of food aid Israel allows to enter Gaza after nearly 22 months of war is seized by Palestinians risking their lives under fire, looted by gangs or diverted in chaotic circumstances rather than reaching those most in need, UN agencies, aid groups, and analysts say.

After images of malnourished children stoked an international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory once more, but on a scale deemed woefully insufficient by international organisations.

Every day, desperate crowds rush towards food convoys or the sites of aid drops by Arab and European air forces.

On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, emaciated Palestinians rushed to pallets parachuted from a plane, jostling and tearing packages from each other in a cloud of dust.

“Hunger has driven people to turn on each other. People are fighting each other with knives,” Amir Zaqot, who came seeking aid, said.

To avoid disturbances, World Food Programme (WFP) drivers have been instructed to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves.

“A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured retrieving the bag,” sighed a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern Gaza Strip.

‘Truly tragic’

Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah in the south to join the queue and reserve his spot. He said there were already “thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils.”

“Suddenly, we heard gunshots... There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, the elderly,” the 42-year-old said.

Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for aid since May 27, the majority by the Israeli Army, the United Nations said on Friday.

The Israeli Army denies any targeting, insisting it only fires “warning shots” when people approach too close to its positions.

International organisations have condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including slow customs clearance, and limited access points.

On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli Army “changed loading plans for the WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security,” a senior UN official said.

In the south of Gaza, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, “there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (in central Gaza),” an NGO official said. “One is fairly safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that’s the one we are forced to take.”

‘Darwinian experiment’

Some of the aid is looted by gangs — who often directly attack warehouses — and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to humanitarian sources.

“It becomes this sort of Darwinian social experiment of the survival of the fittest,” said Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

“People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour,” he said.

Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, added: “We are in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It’s become a new profession.”

This food is then resold to “those who can still afford it” in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kg bag of flour can exceed $400, he added.

‘Never found proof’

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war triggered by the militant group’s October 2023 attack.

Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation supported by Israel and the U.S., which has become the main aid distributor, sidelining UN agencies.

However, for more than two million inhabitants of Gaza, the GHF has just four distribution points, which the UN describes as a “death trap”.

“UN agencies and humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses across the Gaza Strip,” said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead at Oxfam. “These calls have largely been ignored.”

The Israeli Army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid.

According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control.

The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without naming the one led by Abu Shabab.

Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang’s members were implicated in “all kinds of criminal activities”.

“None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli Army,” a humanitarian worker in Gaza said.