Gangsters block aid distribution in south Gaza

After gangsters robbed nearly 100 UN lorries, injuring many of the Palestinian drivers, on 16 November - one of the worst single losses of aid during the war - a number of alleged looters were then killed in an ambush.

A notorious Gazan criminal family then blocked the main Salah al-Din Road leading from Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing point for two days last week.

Witnesses said iron barriers were erected and lorries trying to access the aid distribution point were fired at.

“Law and order have broken down in the area around the Kerem Shalom crossing, which remains the main entry point of goods, and gangs are filling the power vacuum,” says Sam Rose, deputy director of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in Gaza.

“It’s inevitable after 13 months of intense conflict - things fall apart.”

Many see Hamas’s attempts to take a lead against the criminality as the direct consequence of Israels’ failure to agree on a post-war plan in Gaza.

There are currently no alternatives to replace the Islamist movement and armed group which Israeli leaders pledged to destroy after last year’s deadly 7 October attacks.

The chaos comes at a time when aid entering the Palestinian territory has dropped to some of the lowest levels since the start of the war.

While the threat of famine is greatest in besieged parts of the north where Israel is conducting a new, intense military offensive, in the south there are also major shortages of food, medicines and other goods.

“Prices of basic commodities are sky-rocketing - a bag of flour costs more than $200 (£160), a single egg $15 - or else goods are simply not available,” Sam Rose of Unrwa says.

Every day in the past week, Umm Ahmed has stood with her children in a huge queue outside a bakery in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where ultimately some loaves are given out.

“My children are very hungry every day. We can’t afford the basics. It’s constant suffering. No food, no water, no cleaning products, nothing,” she says.

“We don’t want much, just to live a decent life. We need food. We need goods to come in and be distributed fairly. That’s all we’re asking for.”

Early in the war, as food became increasingly scarce, desperate Gazans were sometimes seen stealing from incoming aid lorries.

Soon, cigarette smuggling became a huge business with gangs holding up convoys at gunpoint after they arrived from Egypt’s Rafah crossing and, after this shut in May, Kerem Shalom.

A cigarette packet can sell for exorbitant amounts in Gaza: while a packet of 20 cost about 20 shekels ($5.40) before the war, now a single cigarette can cost 180 shekels ($48.60).

Cigarettes are being found within the frames of wooden aid pallets and inside closed food cans, indicating that there is a regional racket involved in smuggling.

For the past six weeks, the Israeli authorities have banned commercial imports, arguing that these benefit Hamas.

This has added to the decrease in the supply of food, which is in turn driving the rise in armed looting.

Stolen goods, from flour to winter shelters, sent as international donations and meant to be given as free handouts to needy people can only be bought at extortionate prices on Gaza’s black market.

Meanwhile, months’ worth of donated supplies are being held back in Egypt due to hold-ups in aid delivery.

In recent days, local media reports are suggesting that Israel is now studying the option of delivering aid to Gaza by means of a private, armed American security contractor.

While nothing has yet been officially announced, aid workers are worried.

Georgios Petropoulos of Ocha questions which donor countries would want supplies distributed this way.

“How safe is it really going to be?” he asks: “I think it will be a vector for more bloodshed and violence.”