Mike Wagenheim/JNS.org
After years of claiming that Israel falsely accused Hamas of blocking humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza, the United Nations said on Sunday that the terror group, which it didn’t name, has “endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food assistance and disrupted lifesaving humanitarian operations.”
Ramiz Alakbarov, U.N. deputy special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, stated that on Saturday, armed people “affiliated with the de facto authorities” forced their way into a food distribution point in northern Gaza and entered a World Food Programme warehouse “and reportedly assaulted two truck drivers who were delivering humanitarian supplies.”
Humanitarian workers were forced to halt food distributions as a result, according to Alakbarov, who twice blamed “de facto authorities.”
Hamas controls the enclave.
“The U.N. at last states the obvious on systemic Hamas theft and diversion of aid in Gaza,” a senior U.S. official told JNS.
Over the past two years, investigators with the inspector general’s office at the U.S. Agency for International Development “consistently flagged incidents of Hamas interference in the delivery of aid, which the U.N., until now, chose to ignore,” the senior U.S. official told JNS.
The incidents with the “de facto authorities” in question “are not isolated” and “reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction, including smuggling attempts, targeting and abusing humanitarian operations,” Alakbarov stated.
Alakbarov also blamed Israel, as the global body often does when it is commenting on the misdeeds of the enemies of the Jewish state.
“The expansion of areas under Israeli control is further reducing the space available to civilians, making it imperative that humanitarian assistance is able to move safely and reach people in need without interference,” Alakbarov stated.
The Israeli military operates in parts of the Strip, as global organizations seek Hamas’s disarmament as part of a ceasefire and peace process, which Washington brokered.
U.N. officials have said persistently that desperate citizens and local armed gangs had diverted or stolen aid in Gaza.
