Gaza’s help fails to reach most of the needy as hunger Haunts lives

The breach of the food aid, Israel allows to enter Gaza After nearly 22 months of war was seized by Palestinians who risk their lives under fire, looted by gangs or raised in chaotic conditions instead of reaching those who are more in need of the United Nations.

After the images of malnourished children went to an international outcry, the help began to be delivered to the territory once again, but on a scale it is considered sadly inadequate by international organizations.

Every day, AFP Correspondents on the ground see desperate crowds rushing towards food accompaniment or the sites of aid drops from Arabic and European Air Forces.

On Thursday, at Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, the weak Palestinians rushed to parachute pallets by a plane, hitting and torn packages from each other in a cloud of dust.

“Hunger has led people to turn each other. People are struggling with each other with knives,” said Amir Zaqot, who came seeking help helping AFP.

To avoid disorders, drivers of the World Food Program (WFP) have been ordered to stop before their destination and let people help themselves. But no effect.

“A truck wheel almost crushes my head and injured the recovery of the bag,” he sighed a man, bringing a bag of flour to his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern lane of Gaza.

‘Really tragic’

Mohammad Abu Taha went to a distribution position near Rafah in the south Dawn to take part in the tail and maintain his spot. He said there were already “thousands waiting for, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils”.

“Suddenly, we heard shots ….. There was no way to get away. People started running, pushing and pushing each other, children, women, the elderly,” the 42 -year -old said. “The scene was really tragic: blood everywhere, injured, dead.”

About 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, waiting for help since May 27, the majority by the Israeli army, the UN said on Friday.

The Israeli army denies any targeting, insisting that it only burns “warning shots” when people are getting close to its positions.

International organizations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities to distribute Gaza aid, including refusing border crossing licenses, slow clearance, limited access points and dangerous routes.

On Tuesday, at Zikim, the Israeli army “changed the loading plans for WFP, unexpectedly mixing the load.

To the south of Gaza, at the intersection of the Kerem Shalom border, “There are two possible routes to reach our warehouses [in central Gaza]”said an NGO employee who also preferred to remain anonymous.” One is quite safe, the other is regularly the scene of battle and looting, and this is what we have to take. “

‘Darwinian experiment’

Gangs plunder some of the aids – which often attack warehouses – and raise them to traders who resell it at excessive prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts.

“This is the kind of Darwinian social experiment for the survival of the most capable,” said Muhammad Shehada, a visiting colleague at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

“People who are the most starving in the world and do not have the energy should run and hunt after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and fight for a flour bag,” he said.

Jean Guy Vataux, an emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: “We are in a super-capitalist system where traders and corrupt gangs send children life and extremes at distribution points or during the looting.

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

‘I never found proof’

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of calling for help provided by the UN, which has delivered most of the aid since the start of the war caused by the October 2023 attack of the Palestinian group.

The Israeli authorities used this category to justify the overall exclusion they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organization backed by Israel and the United States, which has become the United States.

However, for more than 2 million Gaza residents, the GHF has only four distribution points, which the UN describes as a “death trap”.

“Hamas … steals many times help from the population of Gaza, shooting Palestinians,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday.

But according to senior Israeli military officials reported by New York Times On July 26, Israel “never found proof” that the team had “systematically stolen help” by the UN.

Weakened by the Israeli war, which has seen most of the higher leadership killed, Hamas today consists of “basically decentralized autonomous cells”, Shehada said.

Said workers in help AFP That during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, the Gaza police – which includes many members of Hamas – helped to secure humanitarian escorts, but that today’s gap of power promoted insecurity and looting.

“United Nations Organizations and Humanitarian Organizations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect the aid accompanying and storage sites in our warehouses throughout the Gaza Strip,” said Bushra Khalidi, a politician.

“These calls have been largely ignored,” he added.

‘All kinds of criminal activities’

The Israeli army is also accused of equipping Palestinian criminal networks in its struggle against Hamas and allowing them to plunder help.

“The actual theft of aid from the beginning of the war was carried out by criminal gangs, under the clock of the Israeli forces and allowed them to operate near May of Krem Salom in Gaza.”

According to reports by Israeli and Palestinian media, an armed group called popular forces, consisting of members of a Beduan tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, operates in the southern area under Israeli control.

ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a “criminal gang operating in the RAFAH region widely accused of looting trucks”.

The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had reinforced Palestinian gangs unlike Hamas, without immediately saying the one that led Abu Shabab.

Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the University of Tel Aviv’s Moshe Dayan Center, said that many of the gang members are involved in “all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling and such things”.

“None of these can happen to Gaza without the approval, at least implicitly, of the Israeli army,” said a humanist worker in Gaza, asking not to be named.