Armed clans in the Rafah area are blocking trucks entering Gaza from Israel, leading some organizations to avoid sending desperately needed humanitarian aid. These incidents are occurring in an area under full IDF control, with the army refraining from action due to concerns that harm to aid workers could provoke international criticism
The Israel Defense Forces is allowing armed Palestinians to loot aid convoys entering Gaza and to extort protection money from them, say sources in international aid organizations working in the enclave.
The sources told Haaretz that the armed men who belong to two clans from the Rafah district 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 aid transported by these convoys contains the vast majority of the food and equipment Gazans desperately need, since commercial imports have stopped almost completely.
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 Hamas.
The aid groups say there is no solution that would enable aid to reach the residents without some police force, whether Palestinian or international, being stationed in Gaza. But both the Israeli government and the IDF object to this. The Israeli government wants the army to take responsibility for aid distribution, but the defense establishment opposes this idea as well.
The problem of armed gangs has gotten worse since the IDF took control of Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt in May and Egypt shut down the crossing in response. Until then, Rafah was the main conduit for bringing goods into Gaza. Since then, most aid has entered through Kerem Shalom, but armed gangs control the area on the Gazan side.
In recent weeks, the thefts have increased so much that the maps distributed by the United Nations label that stretch of road as high-risk, with a note attributing this risk mainly to the collapse of the civil order.
Trucks entering from Kerem Shalom pass through the area along the Egyptian border, which the IDF controls, and then turn north toward Rafah, where the gangs attack them. Sources familiar with the aid distribution process say the gangs stop the trucks through improvised barricades or by shooting at the tires. They then demand a “transit fee” of 15,000 shekels ($4,000). Any driver who refuses risks being abducted or having the contents of his truck stolen.
Sources working in Gaza say 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.
“I saw one Israeli tank, and a Palestinian armed with a Kalashnikov [rifle] just 100 meters [around 325 feet] from it,” a senior official from one organization working in Gaza tells Haaretz. “The armed men beat the drivers and take all the food if they aren’t paid [protection money].”
To prevent this, some groups do agree to pay. Payments are generally made through a Palestinian company that serves as an intermediary. Several sources say that officers from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the army unit responsible for aid to Gaza, even recommended that they work through that particular company.
“I tried everything,” the senior aid official says. “We wanted to travel by other roads, but the IDF forbade that. We tried coming at 5 A.M. in hopes that the thieves wouldn’t be there, but it didn’t help. We even tried negotiating with the armed men and explaining that this was food for people, but that also didn’t help.”
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.
Army sources said that in the past, there were cases when soldiers did attack armed men who were looting aid trucks, but employees of aid organizations got wounded in the process. Those incidents sparked harsh criticism in the international media, so now the army prefers not to risk attacking anyone in the vicinity of the trucks. The one exception is when the armed men attacking the trucks are Hamas members.
The looting zone
Around a kilometer from Kerem Shalom, shortly before the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, there’s an area that the army calls “the looting zone.” This is where most of the looting of aid trucks takes place. Yet the area is under full control of the IDF, with troops stationed just hundreds of meters, and sometimes less, from the roadblocks the armed men erect on the road.
The Israel Air Force monitors the area using drones while IDF lookouts monitor what is happening from the ground. Soldiers operating in Gaza say they’re very familiar with the looting, which they say has become routine.
During a tour for journalists with IDF forces in northern Gaza, reporters saw an aid convoy heading south. One officer told them, “In another 500 meters, they’ll be looted.” None of the soldiers looked surprised.
The IDF lookouts, both on the ground and in the air, operate 24 hours a day along the logistical routes the army has paved throughout Gaza. These are the roads the aid convoys use. Truck drivers and officials from international aid organizations charge that the soldiers can see the attacks on the convoys, yet do nothing.
The IDF says another road was recently opened in southern Gaza that will enable truck drivers to bypass the looting zone. Yet several incidents have already occurred along this road as well. Palestinians say the gangs are still collecting protection money for letting aid convoys into both “safe areas” and combat zones.
Senior defense officials said recently that the heads of the defense establishment are aware of the problem of armed gangs looting the aid trucks, and have also discussed it with the government. IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi recently visited the Southern Command and discussed the problems surrounding humanitarian aid with officers there, including the fact that some soldiers have refused to be involved in anything to do with aid distribution.
Another problem that greatly impedes the entry of aid into the enclave is cigarette smuggling. Ever since the siege was imposed Gaza after the war broke out a little over a year ago, the government has determined which products are allowed to enter the Strip as aid, and one thing it has barred is cigarettes. But Gazan criminals and merchants have created a smuggling network for cigarettes using the aid trucks. The smuggled cigarettes are sold in the enclave at exorbitant prices that can reach $200 per pack.
In some case, the cigarettes are smuggled in aid packages and then collected by the looters on the stretches of road they control. At other times, the cigarettes make it to the aid organizations’ warehouses, and the gangs seize them when the aid being is unloaded. The cigarette smuggling encourages the looting and increases the dangers facing aid workers when they try to distribute aid.
The cigarettes are apparently inserted into sacks of aid in Egypt. According to the aid agencies, everyone involved knows about this, including the IDF, but nobody is doing anything to prevent it. The army, they noted, inspects every item that enters Gaza, so they could easily prevent the cigarette smuggling. Alternatively, Israel could simply allow cigarettes to enter legally.
And aside from the dangers created by the smuggling, the shortage of cigarettes creates other dangers as well. The Gazan press is rife with stories about poisonous materials, including insecticides and agricultural pesticides, being dripped onto dried leaves that are then rolled to make cigarette substitutes.
The ATM ‘tax’
Haaretz has received further evidence of the social collapse in the Gaza Strip. Because the electricity network in Gaza hasn’t been operating for a year, it’s impossible to use credit cards so the entire economy runs on cash. The bills have become worn and almost unusable.
Only one working ATM is left in all of Gaza, in the area of Deir al-Balah, and it, too, is controlled by an armed group. Anyone who withdraws money from the ATM must pay 30 percent of the amount to the armed men who control the region, say sources. Gazans are searching for creative ways to do business, and one popular solution is to transfer money between residents’ relatives in the West Bank. If both the buyer and seller have family in the West Bank, or in another country, the buyer’s family transfers the money to the seller’s family to complete the transaction.
Because of the lack of electricity, there are no lights at night and personal safety – especially for women and teenage girls – is a big problem. In addition, Israel doesn’t allow goods such as clothing and shoes into the Strip. Stories from the enclave tell of large numbers of people wearing tattered clothing, some of them barefoot or with improvised shoes.
COGAT took pride last week in the successful polio vaccination campaign, which saw 93 percent of the children in the Strip vaccinated. An aid organization involved in the campaign wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and give every child who came to be vaccinated a sack of flour, some soap or something else to encourage vaccination, and also to help their families. But because there is no group capable of guarding the vaccination centers, there was fear that any collection of food, soap or other valuable items would attract armed robbers, who could disrupt the vaccination campaign. In the end, it was decided to make do with just giving a dose of vitamin A. “Vitamin A has no market value,” says one of those involved, “so no one steals it.”
The IDF spokesperson said the army attaches “supreme importance to providing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. As a result, we are acting to enable and ease the transfer of aid in coordination with the international community and subject to careful security checks at the crossings.
“In light of the attempts by terrorist organizations to systematically exploit the transfer of aid, the IDF carries out targeted attacks against armed terrorists who loot the humanitarian aid,” the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson also said that “these actions are carried out as a matter of routine, according to the operational orders and while taking maximum caution, with an emphasis on focusing on attacking the terrorists and preventing damage to the transfer of the aid. The IDF acts in coordination with the international aid organizations to provide preemptive solutions and alternative means as part of the joint coordination for transferring the aid to the Gaza Strip.”
- Photo: The route in Gaza where trucks are being looted, this week. Aid organizations say the Israeli army is preventing them from using other routes, which are considered safer.