Gaza aid truck drivers face increasing danger from desperate crowds, armed gangs

AP:

Truck drivers trying to deliver aid inside Gaza say their work has become increasingly dangerous in recent months as people have grown desperately hungry and violent gangs have filled a power vacuum left by the territory’s Hamas rulers.

Crowds of hungry people routinely rip aid off the backs of moving trucks, the local drivers said. Some trucks are hijacked by armed men working for gangs who sell the aid in Gaza’s markets for exorbitant prices. Israeli troops often shoot into the chaos, they said.

Since March, when Israel ended a ceasefire in its war with Hamas and halted all imports, the situation has grown increasingly dire in the territory of some two million Palestinians. International experts are now warning of a “worst-case scenario of famine” in Gaza.

Under heavy international pressure, Israel last week announced measures to let more aid into Gaza. Though aid groups say it’s still not enough, getting even that amount from the border crossings to the people who need it is difficult and extremely dangerous, the drivers said.

DRIVING AID TRUCKS CAN BE DEADLY

Thousands of people packed around the road Monday as two trucks entered southern Gaza, AP video showed. Young men overwhelmed the trucks, standing on the cabs’ roofs, dangling from the sides and clambering over each other onto the truck beds to grab boxes even as the trucks slowly kept driving.

“Some of my drivers are scared to go transfer aid because they’re concerned about how they’ll untangle themselves from large crowds of people,” said Abu Khaled Selim, vice president of the Special Transport Association, a nonprofit group that works with private transportation companies across the Gaza Strip and advocates for truck drivers’ rights.

Selim said his nephew, Ashraf Selim, a father of eight, was killed July 29 by a stray bullet when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds climbing onto the aid truck he was driving.

Shifa Hospital officials said they received his body with an apparent gunshot to the head. The Israeli military said it was unaware of the incident and that “as a rule” it does not carry out deliberate attacks on aid trucks.

Earlier in the war, aid deliveries were safer because, with more food getting into Gaza, the population was less desperate. Hamas-run police had been seen securing convoys and went after suspected looters and merchants who resold aid at exorbitant prices,

Now, “with the situation unsecured, everything is permissible,” said Selim, who appealed for protection so the aid to trucks could reach warehouses.

The UN does not accept protection from Israeli forces, saying it would violate its rules of neutrality, and said that given the urgent need for aid it would accept that hungry people were going to grab food off the back of the trucks as long as they weren’t violent.

Flooding Gaza with renewed aid would ease the desperation and make things safer for the drivers, said Juliette Touma, communications director at UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Ali al-Derbashi, 22, was an aid truck driver for more than a year and a half, but he quit after his last trip three weeks ago because of the increasing danger, he said. Some people taking aid off the trucks are now carrying cleavers, knives and axes, he said.

He was once ambushed and forcibly redirected to an area designated by Israel as a conflict zone in its war against Hamas. There everything was stolen, including his truck’s fuel and batteries, and his tires were shot out, he said. He was beaten and his phone was stolen.

“We put our lives in danger for this. We leave our families for two or three days every time. And we don’t even have water or food ourselves,” he said. In addition to the danger, the drivers faced humiliation from Israeli forces, he said, who put them through “prolonged searches, unclear instructions, and hours of waiting.”