Hamas must not subvert food aid

Can there be anything more despicable than Hamas’s warning – with threats of dire retribution – to desperate Gazans not to avail themselves of the new system of food aid that began operating on Tuesday, run by the US-backed, Israeli-approved Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?

Thanks largely to Hamas – egged on by outspoken UN rejection of the distribution scheme – chaos descended after the opening of the first distribution point in the terrorist stronghold of Rafah. Despite Hamas’s warning and physical attempts to keep Gazans away, thousands attempted to reach the site. Israeli security had to restore order.

Despite the chaos, the GHF said that with the help of local non-government organisations, it had managed to distribute 8000 food boxes, estimated to provide food for 462,000 people for three to five days. That clearly is no more than a drop in the ocean following findings by global hunger watchdog the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Partnership earlier in May that nearly a half-million Gazans already faced starvation.

It is far short of what is urgently needed, but it is a start after Israel’s 11-week blockade of aid supplies, and with more distribution points set to open in coming days it is a hopeful sign that, at long last, Israel may be able to achieve its goal of being able to distribute food in locations accessible to Gazans rather than send convoys of aid trucks across the territory that invariably are hijacked and looted by Hamas.

Reports on the opening of the first GHF site speak of some Gazans telling reporters the food they were given was the first they had received for which they had not had to pay Hamas.

As The Wall Street Journal reported: “Hamas sustains its rule in Gaza with a flow of salaries and patronage, which depends on its profitable control of aid. Ending that could transform the war, so Hamas fights the new aid plan to keep control.”

Given the suffering of Gaza’s people, that is bad enough. No less iniquitous, however, is the way the foolish UN and some big aid groups are, in effect, helping Hamas’s attempts to scupper the new aid distribution scheme, denouncing it as a “contradiction of humanitarian principles” and an attempt to “weaponise aid”.

They have claimed it will exclude people with mobility issues, assist Israel’s military strategy and set an unacceptable precedent for aid delivery across the world.

The new aid distribution is clearly far from perfect. It falls short of what is needed. But it does offer an alternative to allowing Hamas to go on sustaining its terrorist army with stolen aid intended for starving civilians.

The UN and others who oppose the new system will be playing into the terrorists’ hands and prolonging the war if they fail to understand that.