Chaos, gangs, gunfire: Gaza aid fails to reach most needy
Gaza
after nearly 22 months of war is seized by Palestinians risking their lives under fire, looted by gangs or diverted in chaotic circumstances rather than reaching those most in need, UN agencies, aid groups and analysts say.
After images of malnourished children stoked an international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory once more but on a scale deemed woefully insufficient by international organisations.
Explore courses from Top Institutes in
Please select course:
Select a Course Category
CXO
MBA
Healthcare
Digital Marketing
Project Management
Data Science
others
Operations Management
Leadership
Data Science
Management
Finance
Design Thinking
Data Analytics
Product Management
Cybersecurity
Degree
Technology
Public Policy
Artificial Intelligence
PGDM
MCA
healthcare
Others
Skills you'll gain:
Technology Strategy & Innovation
Emerging Technologies & Digital Transformation
Leadership in Technology Management
Cybersecurity & Risk Management
Duration:
24 Weeks
Indian School of Business
ISB Chief Technology Officer
Starts on
Jun 28, 2024
Get Details
Skills you'll gain:
Operations Strategy for Business Excellence
Organizational Transformation
Corporate Communication & Crisis Management
Capstone Project Presentation
Duration:
11 Months
IIM Lucknow
Chief Operations Officer Programme
Starts on
Jun 30, 2024
Get Details
Skills you'll gain:
Digital Strategy Development Expertise
Emerging Technologies & Digital Trends
Data-driven Decision Making
Leadership in the Digital Age
Duration:
40 Weeks
Indian School of Business
ISB Chief Digital Officer
Starts on
Jun 30, 2024
Get Details
Skills you'll gain:
Customer-Centricity & Brand Strategy
Product Marketing, Distribution, & Analytics
Digital Strategies & Innovation Skills
Leadership Insights & AI Integration Expertise
Duration:
10 Months
IIM Kozhikode
IIMK Chief Marketing and Growth Officer
Starts on
Apr 7, 2024
Get Details
Every day, AFP correspondents on the ground see desperate crowds rushing towards food convoys or the sites of aid drops by Arab and European air forces.
On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, emaciated Palestinians rushed to pallets parachuted from a plane, jostling and tearing packages from each other in a cloud of dust.
"Hunger has driven people to turn on each other. People are fighting each other with knives," Amir Zaqot, who came seeking aid, told AFP.
Live Events
To avoid disturbances,
World Food Programme
(
WFP
) drivers have been instructed to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves. But to no avail.
"A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured retrieving the bag," sighed a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern Gaza Strip.
Truly tragic
Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah in the south to join the queue and reserve his spot. He said there were already "thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils."
"Suddenly, we heard gunshots..... There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, the elderly," said the 42-year-old. "The scene was truly tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead."
Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for aid since May 27, the majority by the Israeli army, the
United Nations
said on Friday.
The Israeli army denies any targeting, insisting it only fires "warning shots" when people approach too close to its positions.
International organisations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes.
On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army "changed loading plans for WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security," said a senior UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the south of Gaza, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, "there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (in central Gaza)," said an NGO official, who also preferred to remain anonymous. "One is fairly safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that's the one we're forced to take."
Darwinian experiment
Some of the aid is looted by gangs -- who often directly attack warehouses -- and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts.
"It becomes this sort of Darwinian social experiment of the survival of the fittest," said Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
"People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour," he said.
Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (
MSF
) in Gaza, added: "We're in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It's become a new profession."
This food is then resold to "those who can still afford it" in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kilogramme bag of flour can exceed $400, he added.
Never found proof
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war triggered by the militant group's October 2023 attack.
The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation supported by Israel and the United States which has become the main aid distributor, sidelining UN agencies.
However, for more than two million inhabitants of Gaza the GHF has just four distribution points, which the UN describes as a "death trap".
"Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population many times by shooting Palestinians," said the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
But according to senior Israeli military officials quoted by the
New York Times
on July 26, Israel "never found proof" that the group had "systematically stolen aid" from the UN.
Weakened by the war with Israel which has seen most of its senior leadership killed, Hamas today is made up of "basically decentralised autonomous cells" said Shehada.
He said while Hamas militants still hunker down in each Gaza neighbourhood in tunnels or destroyed buildings, they are not visible on the ground "because Israel has been systematically going after them".
Aid workers told AFP that during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, the Gaza police -- which includes many Hamas members -- helped secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum was fostering insecurity and looting.
"UN agencies and humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses across the Gaza Strip," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead at
Oxfam
.
"These calls have largely been ignored," she added.
All kinds of criminal activities
The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid.
"The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza," Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May.
According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the
Popular Forces
, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control.
The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks".
The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab.
Michael Milshtein, head of the
Palestinian Studies Forum
at the Moshe Dayan Center of
Tel Aviv University
, said many of the gang's members were implicated in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that".
"None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army," said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named.
Economic Times WhatsApp channel
)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
Wall Street Banks Lose Ground in Europe as Tariffs Spook Clients
(Bloomberg) -- As US President Donald Trump has ratcheted up his rhetoric against trading partners in Europe — corporates across the continent are taking notice. As a result, some companies have begun to diversify their banking relationships away from the giants of Wall Street, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That's been a boon for Europe's leading banks, which have been actively vying to win the extra business. 'Some players are saying that it's better to go to European or French investment banks for advice on financing or mergers and acquisitions,' said Arnaud Petit, managing director of Edmond de Rothschild's corporate finance business. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing sees similar in potential clients' requests for proposals: 'It is happening every day with client wins and RFPs and new business that we put on.' So far this year, roughly half of the euro bond deals from non-US companies did not involve any of the five biggest US banks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That's up five percentage points from a year earlier. For sterling bonds the gap has widened even further — Wall Street banks were shut out of just 47% of deals throughout all of last year. So far this year, though, they've been excluded from 64% of them. The emergence of the ability of a few European banks 'to be able to offer competitive services and advice to clients' has created a desire among clients to switch, according to UBS Group AG Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti. 'We believe we are well placed to continue to benefit from that diversification.' Even before Trump's trade war kicked off in earnest, the biggest of the US banks warned that it was starting to see an impact. By April, JPMorgan Chase & Co. had already lost 'a couple' of bond deals tied to the tariff uncertainty, with companies opting for local banks instead, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said in an interview with Fox Business at the time. He warned that the tumult was 'causing cumulative damage including huge anger at the United States.' The latest example of a win for non-US banks came this week, when Zurich-based insurer Chubb Ltd. issued an offshore yuan-bond. It opted for Standard Chartered Plc to help take on the deal. The bank was told: 'We want to bank with the regional champions, rather than just with global banks in general,' Standard Chartered Chief Financial Officer Diego de Giorgi said. 'Because we think that you guys bring specific skills in a world that is fragmenting.' Chubb is not an exception. The effect is most pronounced in Asia, where economies are expected to be hard hit by the changing trade regimes and the re-routing of supply chains, said Ruchirangad Agarwal, head of corporate banking for Asia and the Middle East at the research firm Coalition Greenwich. 'The willingness of companies in Asia to change their transaction bank is currently at a high: a third of them plan to issue a new RFP within the next 12 months,' Agarwal said. Already, US lenders' market share in financing trade for Chinese companies has dropped in recent years - from 12% in 2017 to about 7% share now, he added. 'We expect to see heightened uncertainty and customer churn at US banks as large corporates take an active risk management stance on FX, interest rates, counterparty risk, geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions,' said Martin Smith, head of markets analysis at East & Partners. BNP Paribas SA, meanwhile, has gained more share than any other player in Asia, Smith said. 'There are clearly strategic opportunities in the tectonic shifts that the world has been seeing in recent months' Societe Generale SA CEO's Slawomir Krupa said of companies looking to shift toward European banking partners. 'The logic behind this form of risk diversification has become more apparent for companies.' --With assistance from Harry Wilson, Claudia Cohen and Noele Illien. More stories like this are available on
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
The EU needn't have yielded to the US on a trade deal
When US President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shook hands at Trump's Scottish golf resort last week, they weren't just announcing a new trade deal—they were formalizing Europe's economic and ideological surrender. By agreeing to 15% tariffs on most exports to the US, the EU has capitulated to Trump's zero-sum world-view. In doing so, it has abandoned the principles of multilateralism that have long guided global trade. The economic consequences will likely be immediate and severe. European exporters now face tariffs nearly ten times higher than the previous trade-weighted average of 1.6%. Volkswagen alone has reported a $1.5 billion hit due to higher US tariffs. Also Read: Global shake-up: America's retreat spells a big opportunity for Europe But this is just part of the problem. The real damage is what the EU agreed to pay for the 'privilege' of maintaining access to the US market: buying $750 billion worth of US energy over three years and investing another $600 billion in the US economy. These staggering sums will inevitably divert resources from European development and innovation while legitimizing bilateral coercion over the multilateral rules-based World Trade Organization system. As critics have rightly pointed out, this massive outflow comes directly at the expense of domestic investment. What makes the EU's surrender especially troubling is how unnecessary it was. As America's largest economic partner, the EU has considerable leverage. The bloc's $270 billion services deficit with the US offered clear avenues for retaliation, from digital taxes to restrictions on American tech giants. Also Read: The IMF's 'World Economic Outlook' is too coy for a Trump-shaken world Weeks earlier, anticipating a stalemate, European policymakers had prepared counter-tariffs targeting $107 billion worth of American goods. But the EU had far more potent weapons at its disposal. Its Anti-Coercion Instrument, for example, could have barred US companies from government contracts, revoked intellectual-property rights and imposed broader trade restrictions. Yet, national leaders, fearing Trump's retaliation and under pressure from domestic industries eager to maintain access to the US market, refused to authorize Von der Leyen to use any of these tools, forcing her to negotiate from a position of weakness. The contrast with other US trading partners could not be starker. When the UK secured a 10% tariff rate from Trump in May, European leaders expressed concern about accepting similar terms. Now, they hail 15% tariffs on EU exports as a diplomatic breakthrough. Britain, acting alone, negotiated better terms than the EU as a whole. Also Read: How Trump got the upper hand over the EU on tariffs This failure exposes the fundamental weakness of European governance. Lacking a true EU-wide governance system, the bloc remains incapable of translating competing national agendas into a unified position. With Von der Leyen hamstrung by member states prioritizing narrow domestic interests over European cohesion, the result was a deal that pleases no one but Trump and locks Europe into a state of structured dependency. The EU's failure to push back against Trump is especially troubling given its stated goal of achieving strategic autonomy. Some may argue that the deal—technically not a formal trade agreement, but rather a set of statements outlining an ongoing negotiation process—buys time. By appeasing Trump, the argument goes, the Commission has maintained transatlantic ties while creating space for future carve-outs. But if this were truly a time-buying strategy, we would expect the EU to take concrete steps to advance strategic autonomy: boosting defence spending, accelerating supply-chain diversification and investing in retaliatory capabilities. Instead, after years of pledging to reduce reliance on foreign powers, EU leaders chose to replace Russian energy imports with American supplies and commit to massive purchases of US military equipment. Also Read: Mint Explainer: Why does the EU keep sanctioning Russia? Europe's subordination both reflects and reinforces the continent's dependence on US power. It has created a structural imbalance that extends across defence, trade and energy, leaving Europe in a state of permanent vassalization. Trump's ability to extract sweeping economic concessions and defence-spending commitments shows how effectively the US can weaponize Europe's security anxieties to pursue broader geopolitical objectives. The $600 billion investment pledge, much of it earmarked for military-equipment purchases, forces Europe to subsidize American defence contractors while undermining its own industrial base. By giving in to Trump's demands, the EU validated Trump's transactional approach, emboldening not only future American administrations but also other global powers eager to turn trade into an instrument of geopolitical coercion. While the immediate crisis may have passed, the long-term damage to EU credibility and autonomy will be long-lasting. The widespread perception that Europe surrenders without resistance will undoubtedly invite further challenges to European interests. Until European leaders are able to break the cycle of dependency by empowering EU institutions to act decisively against external coercion, these humiliating capitulations will only multiply, reducing the continent to a prosperous yet powerless appendage of the US empire. ©2025/Project Syndicate The author is professor of European Union Law at HEC Paris and visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and Natolin.
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Pakistan and Iran agree to increase bilateral trade to $8 billion annually
Pakistan and Iran agreed on Sunday to increase bilateral trade to USD 8 billion annually, taking advantage of their geography and the 'discount of distance,' as trade ministers from the two countries held discussions to deepen economic and political ties. During Iranian President Pezeshkian's visit, Pakistan and Iran pledged to raise trade to $8B, expand regional links, and strengthen ties in energy, logistics, and services.(AFP) The agreement was reached during a meeting between Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan and Iranian Minister for Industry, Mines and Trade Mohammad Atabak on the sidelines of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's two-day state visit to Pakistan. Pezeshkian landed in Lahore on Saturday afternoon and then flew to the capital in the evening. A statement by the Commerce Ministry here said the high-level discussion between Khan and Atabak marked a renewed commitment from both sides to accelerate trade, remove border bottlenecks, and build trust-based partnerships across priority sectors. '[During the meeting], Kamal envisioned that, if fully leveraged, bilateral trade between Pakistan and Iran could easily exceed USD 5–8 billion annually in the coming years,' the ministry said. Before departing from Tehran, Pezeshkian had said Iran and Pakistan have always maintained 'good, sincere, and deep relations' and plan to increase bilateral trade volume to USD 10 billion annually. During Sunday's meeting, emphasis was placed on maximising the potential of neighbourhood trade, with Khan highlighting how ASEAN countries have benefited enormously by trading within their region. 'Geography is an advantage. Pakistan and Iran must utilise this discount of distance. If we don't, we lose both time and cost benefits,' he stated. The Pakistani minister suggested organising targeted trade delegations that include representatives from federal and provincial chambers of commerce, enabling focused discussions on market access and regulatory facilitation, according to the statement. 'We've done this model successfully in Belarus and elsewhere,' he was quoted in the statement as saying. 'Let's do the same for Iran, starting with sectors that show the greatest potential for mutual benefit.' The ministers also expressed a shared commitment to increasing the use of existing trade corridors and border facilities. Atabak also highlighted ongoing discussions about increasing Pakistani exports to Iran and encouraged swift follow-up on newly signed agreements. 'Traders and industrialists in both countries are ready. They trust each other. What they need now is a clear and consistent facilitation mechanism from our side,' he noted. Khan said that beyond bilateral gains, such connectivity could expand to Turkey, Central Asia, Russia, and even parts of West Asia, creating an economic bloc of substantial power and resilience. Atabak backs B2B day during top visits, vows to bring Iranian firms to Pakistan Atabak supported the idea of holding a dedicated B2B day during every high-level visit and offered to bring Iranian business groups to Pakistan for in-depth meetings, the statement said. Both ministers agreed on the importance of identifying specific sectors such as agriculture, livestock, services, energy, and cross-border logistics for future collaboration, the statement said. 'With high-level political alignment and mutual trust, Pakistan and Iran appear poised to enter a new phase of strategic economic partnership that could reshape regional trade dynamics,' it added.
