Share this @internewscast.com
Officials announced on Thursday that Israel has halted aid deliveries to northern Gaza, while aid continues to flow from the south. This decision followed the circulation of images showing masked individuals on aid trucks, which clan leaders claimed were protectors, not Hamas members stealing the aid.
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Defence Minister Israel Katz, released a statement declaring that Netanyahu had instructed the military to devise a strategy within two days to prevent Hamas from commandeering aid supplies.
They referenced undisclosed new intelligence suggesting that Hamas was intercepting aid meant for civilians in northern Gaza.
A video went viral on Wednesday portraying numerous masked individuals, some wielding rifles while others had sticks, aboard aid trucks.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer told reporters that aid was continuing to enter from the south but did not specify whether any supplies were entering in the north.
The US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates aid distribution sites in southern and central Gaza, said on X that it was the only humanitarian organisation permitted on Thursday to distribute food in Gaza.
A spokesperson said the foundation was exempt from a two-day suspension of humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory.
The Israeli prime minister’s office and the defence ministry did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The Higher Commission for Tribal Affairs, which represents influential clans in Gaza, said that trucks had been protected as part of an aid security process managed “solely through tribal efforts”. The commission said that no Palestinian faction, a reference to Hamas, had taken part in the process.
Hamas, the militant group that has ruled Gaza for more than two decades but now controls only parts of the territory after nearly two years of war with Israel, denied any involvement.
Throughout the war, numerous clans, civil society groups and factions — including Hamas’ secular political rival Fatah — have stepped in to help provide security for the aid convoys.
Clans made up of extended families connected through blood and marriage have long been a fundamental part of Gazan society.
Acute shortage of basic supplies
Amjad al-Shawa, director of an umbrella body for Palestinian non-governmental organisations, said the aid protected by clans on Wednesday was being distributed to vulnerable families.
Gaza is experiencing an extreme dearth of food and essential supplies due to an almost two-year-long military operation by Israel, which has displaced the majority of the territory’s two million residents.
Aid trucks and warehouses storing supplies have often been looted, frequently by desperate and starving Palestinians. Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies.
“The clans came … to form a stance to prevent the aggressors and the thieves from stealing the food that belongs to our people,” Abu Salman Al Moghani, a representative of Gazan clans, said, referring to Wednesday’s operation.
The Wednesday video was shared on X by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who claimed that Hamas had taken control of aid allowed into Gaza by the Israeli government. Bennett is widely seen as the most viable challenger to Netanyahu at the next election.
Netanyahu is also under internal pressure from his right-wing coalition, with some hardline figures threatening to resign over ceasefire talks and the ongoing provision of humanitarian aid.
The war began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 others hostage into Gaza.
In response, Israel launched a military campaign that has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to local health authorities in Gaza.
At least 118 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since Wednesday, local health authorities said, including some shot near an aid distribution point, the latest in a series of such incidents.
Twenty hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, while Hamas is also holding the bodies of 30 who have died.
