As the debate heats up over the delivery of aid into Gaza, Israeli officials have once again questioned the United Nations over its data, specifically, aid getting stolen or intercepted, and the number of trucks entering the enclave from Israel.
As of August 12, the U.N. Office for Project Services showed that 3,140 trucks have been intercepted en route to their destinations since May 19. Only 412 trucks, 11.6% of the total sent into the region, reached their targeted location. The U.N. said the aid was taken “either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully armed actors.”
On Tuesday, a review conducted by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed to have found that the U.N. figures have failed to account for the entry of around 6,000 additional trucks since May. COGAT said that Israel has allowed about 9,200 trucks to deliver aid to Gaza in the last three months, a figure 2.5 times higher than the around 3,500 trucks counted by the U.N.
People carry boxes of relief supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory, as displaced Palestinians return from an aid distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on June. 8 The UN and major aid organisations have refused to cooperate with the GHF, citing concerns that it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives. (EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)
Orde Kittrie, a law professor at Arizona State University and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that Hamas’ obstruction of aid violates international law.
“Intentionally obstruct[ing] the passage of humanitarian relief, including food, to civilians in need” is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. He said Hamas is violating “the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 11 of which recognizes ‘the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger,’ because it is “starving its own people.”
“What Hamas is doing represents an unusual, if not altogether new, type of violation of the prohibition on ‘starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.’ This prohibition is typically violated by a military intentionally starving enemy civilians in order to pressure the enemy to surrender or to abandon positions or to divert limited resources to the enemy’s own civilians. In contrast, Hamas appears to be intentionally starving their own civilians in order to leverage their suffering as a strategic information weapon against Israel,” he added.
