Convincing evidence Israel backed aid convoy looters in Gaza, historian says | Gaza

A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the beginning of the year said he had seen “extremely convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle Eastern studies at France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, entered Gaza in December, where he was hosted by an international humanitarian organization in the southern coastal province of Al Mawasi.

Israel blocked international media and other independent observers from Gaza, but Filiu managed to escape strict Israeli scrutiny. He eventually left the region shortly after the second brief ceasefire during the war took effect in January. The eyewitness account A Historian in Gaza was published in French in May. English this month.

In the book, Filiu describes the Israeli army’s attacks on security personnel protecting aid convoys. These allowed looters to seize large quantities of food and other supplies destined for Palestinians in desperate need, he writes. At the time, famine was threatening parts of Gaza, according to international humanitarian organizations.

At the time, UN agencies told the Guardian that law and order had broken down in Gaza since Israel began targeting police officers guarding aid convoys. Israel viewed the police in Gaza, which has been governed by Hamas since 2007, as an integral part of the militant Islamist organisation.

In his book, Filiu describes an incident that took place very close to where he was staying in Al Mawasi, a so-called “humanitarian zone” filled with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their frequently destroyed homes elsewhere, when, after weeks of sustained attacks on convoys by local criminals, militias and desperate ordinary people, the UN decided to test a new route that aid officials hoped would prevent looting.

Filiu says 66 trucks carrying flour and hygiene kits moved west from the Israeli checkpoint in Kerem Shalom, along the Egyptian border corridor, and then headed north along the main coastal road. Hamas was determined to ensure the security of the convoy and assigned powerful local families along the route to provide armed guards. However, the convoy soon came under fire.

“It was night and I was… a few hundred meters away. It was clear that Israeli quadcopters were supporting the looters in their attack on local security.” [teams]” writes Filiu.

Filiu says the Israeli army killed “two local dignitaries sitting in their car, armed and ready to protect the convoy” and twenty trucks were robbed; but according to Filiu, the UN considered the loss of a third of the convoy a relative improvement over the previous looting of almost all of the cargo.

“ [Israeli] logic [was] discrediting Hamas and the UN at the time… and allowing [Israel’s] Filiu said the patrons, the looters, would either redistribute the aid to expand their own support networks or make money by reselling it to obtain some cash, so they would not be solely dependent on Israeli financial support.

Israeli officials rejected the accusation. A military spokesman said that in the incident described by Filiu, an Israeli Air Force plane “directed humanitarian aid to Hamas storage units and, using violence, carried out a precision attack on a vehicle containing armed terrorists.” [take] It ran over an aid truck in the Dier al-Balah area.”

“The attack was carried out to ensure that terrorists were hit while avoiding damaging aid. The Israel Defense Forces continues to operate against the Hamas terrorist organization and is doing everything possible to reduce harm to civilians not involved in the incidents. The Israel Defense Forces will also continue to act in accordance with international law to ensure and facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip,” the spokesman said.

Filiu’s accusations echo those of some aid workers at the time. An internal United Nations memo describes Israel’s situation “passive, though not active, helpfulness” It is aimed at some gangs looting in Gaza.

Filiu also accused Israeli forces of attacking a new route recently opened by international aid agencies to avoid looting black spots.

“The World Food Program was trying to create an alternative route to the coastal road and Israel bombed the middle of the road… It was a deliberate attempt to disable it,” the historian told the Guardian.

Israel, which imposed strict restrictions and even a total blockade on aid access to Gaza during the war, has denied allegations that it deliberately blocked aid or supported looters. But prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel was aiding the Popular Forces, an anti-Hamas militia group that included many looters.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of systematically stealing aid to supply its own forces or raise funds for political or military operations. Hamas denied the accusations.

Filiu, who has been visiting Gaza for decades, said he was shocked to learn that “everything that existed before” in the region had been “erased, destroyed” in the war triggered by Hamas’s crackdown on Israel in October 2023. In this attack, approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 people were taken hostage. The ensuing Israeli offensive killed nearly 70,000 people, mostly civilians, and reduced much of the region to rubble.

“Any successful counterinsurgency operation anywhere in history has to balance the military operation with some kind of political campaign to win hearts and minds,” Filiu said.

“[Israel] He never even pretended to do this in Gaza, [but] Gaza is probably the place where Hamas is least liked because they know Hamas in Gaza [and] “Do not be under any illusions about the reality of Islamist domination and the brutality of its rules.”

The historian said that the conflict in Gaza could lead to huge consequences. “I have always been convinced that this is a universal tragedy. This is not a Middle East conflict. This is a laboratory of the post-UN world, the post-Geneva convention world, the post-declaration of human rights world, and this world is very scary because it is not even rational,” Filiu said. “This is so wild.”