As Israel faces blame for the hunger crisis in Gaza, UN's own data shows most of its aid is looted
New data published last week by the U.N. agency UNOPS shows that most of its aid entering the war-torn Gaza Strip has been looted inside the Palestinian territory. UNOPS provides management services for the world body's own humanitarian operations.
Despite this, condemnation of Israel over the hunger crisis in Gaza has been ramping up, prompting an increasing number of Western governments to declare intentions to recognize a Palestinian state as punishment, and leading some media outlets to totally tune out the role both international humanitarian organizations and Hamas, whose October 2023 mass terror attack in Israel started the nearly two-year-old war, have played in this catastrophe.
"Nobody is able to have nuance in this conflict or hold multiple truths and that’s part of why everybody from journalists to NGOs to U.N. officials, the pro-Palestine people, activists and advocates, parrot the same talking points that there's no aid theft and that everything is Israel’s fault," Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital.
Alkhatib, a Gaza-born American, said that while the U.N. and other NGOs were "playing politics" by ignoring their own failures so as not to jeopardize funding and because they are terrified of Hamas, Israeli leaders were also "exaggerating" claims about Hamas being the only ones to loot the aid. A close observer of events in Gaza, he described a chain of thievery and extreme price hikes perpetrated by civilians and merchants that have all contributed to the misery there.
He added that statements by some Israeli government ministers about cutting off aid to force Gazans out of the territory have not helped either.
"Their statements have become the story under which nothing else will fit… no amount of evidence, no amount of clarification, no amount of nuance is going to come anywhere near to grabbing that much attention," Alkhatib said.
Farhan Aziz Haq, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, confirmed to Fox News Digital that some aid had been stolen but said it was because so few supplies had entered Gaza in recent months that "people facing hunger have resorted to offloading supplies directly from our convoys," he said.
"We understand the frustration, but let’s be clear: this isn’t our system. It’s what happens when aid is squeezed through too few routes after months of deprivation," he claimed, adding "only a steady, reliable flow of aid and commercial supplies can restore people’s belief that aid will arrive and allow for safe, orderly distributions," he claimed.
Information posted on the website of UNOPS, the U.N. Office for Project Services, shows that around 87%, or 1,753 of the 2,013 aid trucks that entered Gaza since May 19 did not reach their final destinations, with the aid being stolen either "peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors," as first reported by Israel's news agency, TPS-IL.
The data, which showed that a record 90 trucks carrying some 1,695 tons of aid were looted on May 31 alone, comes as shocking photos of emaciated Palestinian children – some of which were later proven to be children with pre-existing health conditions used as propaganda by Hamas – have gone viral.
The revelations about the U.N.’s faulty aid system also come amid worldwide condemnation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new U.S. and Israel-backed aid distribution mechanism, devised, in part, to prevent aid from falling into Hamas’ hands. The U.N. has refused to cooperate with the GHF. The aid group announced on Sunday that it had delivered nearly 105 million meals to Gazans since it started operations in May......
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Hamas still controls Gaza. So if Israel lets 2,013 trucks of food into Gaza and armed gunmen steal the food then resale it on the black market. Whose fault is it? Have you ever seen a skinny Hamas Terrorist?
