Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped aid from entering northern Gaza Wednesday for 48 hours as a video circulated on social media allegedly depicting Hamas fighters stealing food from civilians.
The announcement came Wednesday after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to leave the coalition if, he asserted, aid continues to fall into the hands of Hamas, according to Haaretz.
“Following information received today indicating that Hamas is once again taking control of humanitarian aid entering northern Gaza and stealing it from civilians, the prime minister and the defense minister have instructed the IDF to present within 48 hours an operational plan to prevent Hamas from taking over the aid,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
The video allegedly depicting the Hamas fighters commandeering aid vehicles was shared widely on social media, including by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, one of Netanyahu’s primary challengers in the next election cycle.
“This is how they continue to fuel Hamas with money and power,” wrote Bennet in a post on X. “Government ministers promised that ‘not a single grain will enter,’ and as usual, reality is the opposite. Shameful.”
But while Israeli officials pointed to the video as evidence of Hamas stealing aid, Hamas denied the claims and Palestinian clans said that the videos depicted their security guards defending the supplies.
The aid documented in the video also allegedly reached aid warehouses in the Gaza Strip and was distributed to residents, according to reports reviewed by Haaretz.
The latest hindrance to the flow of aid to Gazans comes days after the United Nations’ human rights office referred to the “weaponization” of aid distribution in Gaza as a war crime, marking the organization’s strongest statement against Israel’s new aid distribution program.
U.N. human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters Tuesday that over 410 people had been killed by the Israeli military while trying to reach aid sites since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S-Israeli mechanism to deliver aid in Gaza and bypass Hamas, began working late last month. The U.N. official described the system as “Israel’s militarized humanitarian assistance mechanism.”
“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food,” Al-Kheetan said. “The weaponization of food for civilians, in addition to restricting or preventing their access to life-sustaining services, constitutes a war crime and, under certain circumstances, may constitute elements of other crimes under international law.”
The IDF has expressed regret in some cases of killings at aid sites, and says it is instituting changes, according to the Times of Israel. Between May 27 and June 24, there were at least 19 IDF shooting incidents related to humanitarian aid distribution, according to a review by The Times of Israel.
Human rights groups as well as United States lawmakers have warned of mass starvation in Gaza and condemned the failure of Israel to distribute aid. On Tuesday, Hamas’s civil defense agency reported 44 people had been killed by the IDF in two separate instances while waiting for aid.
In response to the reported deaths, the IDF said that a gathering of individuals overnight had been identified in an area “adjacent” to its troops located in central Gaza, where aid groups are known to hand out food. The IDF said that the reports of individuals injured by military fire in that area were “under review,” according to the Times of Israel.
On Tuesday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claimed there were false allegations of attacks near its aid distribution sites, according to the New York Times. It asserted that the international media had been mistakenly linking violence near U.N. convoys with its operations, and has consistently denied any responsibility for the hundreds of deaths linked to its aid distribution sites.
But as chaos and killings continue to mar the aid distribution of the GHF, the death toll from strikes in the Gaza Strip also continues to rise.
On Tuesday, a day on which seven Israeli soldiers were killed in a single incident in Gaza, the daily death toll in Gaza reported by the Hamas-run health ministry rose to 86, and on Wednesday, 74 people were killed by IDF fire and 391 were wounded, the ministry reported. The ministry’s figure does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
On Thursday, the death toll reached 56, updating a previous toll of 35, according to Gaza’s Hamas-linked civil defense agency. The IDF has not commented on Thursday’s strikes.
Israeli human rights groups have called for attention to be brought to the ever-rising death toll in Gaza. Following Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites on June 13, B’tselem, an Israeli humanitarian rights group, warned the public that the ongoing offensive in Gaza could intensify.
“As public and media attention shifts to Iran, the Israeli military appears poised to continue and even intensify its grave war crimes against Palestinians, including the deliberate starvation of millions in the Gaza Strip,” wrote the organization in a statement published June 14.
Standing Together, a joint Jewish-Arab left-wing activist group, has also raised alarm for the continuation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza as Iran and Israel enter a ceasefire following 12 days of conflict.
“This ‘return to routine’ is a return to a horrific routine,” wrote Alon-Lee Green, the co-director of Standing Together, in a post on X. “7 soldiers were killed yesterday in Gaza; Also yesterday, nearly 100 Palestinians were killed in Gaza; 4 funerals today for those killed in the Iranian missile attack” Tuesday in Beersheba.
“And all this death for what? To fuel the eternal war of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir,” the post continued, referring to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. “We are all collateral damage. No one’s life matters.”
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