Gaza Anarchy Hinders Aid Efforts, Despite Daily Combat Pause

Days after Israel announced it would reduce fighting along a key road in southern Gaza to allow more aid to get to desperate Palestinian civilians, over 1,000 truckloads of supplies remained stranded at the border area. That is the result, aid officials and others say, of the extreme anarchy that has gripped Gaza in the ninth month of Israel’s military campaign.

The threat of looting and attacks by armed gangs has forced relief groups to stop delivering assistance in southern Gaza, aid officials say. Trucks using supply routes have been riddled with bullet holes. Businesspeople sending commercial goods into the territory and aid agencies have decided they cannot risk employees’ lives on the drive.

That has meant that the Israeli military’s decision to pause fighting for hours each day along the aid route has so far produced scant humanitarian benefit. There are now thousands of tons of food, medicine and other supplies stuck on the Gaza side of a border crossing mere miles from Palestinians who need them, the officials say.

The grim scenario is part of the domino effect of the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has toppled much of the Hamas government without providing a governing plan or offering security for aid convoys. In much of Gaza, there are no police officers to prevent chaos, few municipal workers to clean up heaping mounds of rubble and trash and only the bare minimum of public services. Into the vacuum have rushed a proliferation of organized crime groups, whose affiliation, if any — whether to Gazan tribes or armed groups such as Hamas — remains unclear.

The aid is piled up at Kerem Shalom, an Israeli-controlled border crossing into southern Gaza, according to the United Nations and the Israeli authorities. Since Israel’s military offensive in the southern city of Rafah shut down another crossing last month, Kerem Shalom has become the only conduit for aid into southern Gaza.

Manhal Shaibar, who oversees a Palestinian trucking company that works at the Kerem Shalom crossing, said some goods were spoiling in the heat on the Gazan side. Some commercial trucks were managing to make their way out under heavy guard, despite the assaults by armed Gazans, he said, but the aid was stuck.