President Biden’s plan to deliver aid to Palestinians via a pier on the Gaza shore is being sabotaged by an inconvenient truth: Getting aid in isn’t the hard part, it’s preventing it from being stolen.
Ignore the wailing of leftists who accuse Israel of preventing food and other shipments from getting to Gazans by, say, shutting down land routes for security; truth is, plenty of aid — more than 569 metric tons — has been processed into Gaza through the floating pier the US finished building this month.
Yet delivering it in a warzone is a logistical nightmare, involving a web of nongovernmental organizations and hard facts on the ground.
The pier was supposed to facilitate the delivery of about 90 trucks of aid a day, but only about 70 had made it to warehouses in the entire week after the pier was built.
The most odious (and predictable) wrench in the cogs: looters.
Eleven of the 16 aid trucks heading from the pier to a warehouse by UN World Food Program on May 18 were ransacked on their route by crowds of people, who stripped the vehicles of goods.
Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder admitted that “some of that initial aid that was brought in. . . was intercepted by some people who took that aid off those vehicles.”
Deliveries were temporarily halted while the Pentagon and UNWFP tried to find alternate routes and sort out better security.
There are few details on exactly who was responsible for the looting in this case, but as Eli Lake highlighted in the Free Press, the amount and quality of food that Israel has facilitated into Gaza is not only sufficient, it’s been improving since January 2024 — yet there’s plenty of evidence that Hamas keeps stealing it.
There is one and only one group in this war that’s bent on causing misery for the people of Gaza — and it’s Hamas.
That’s a fact that neither the Biden administration nor the European Union can seem to come to terms with.
They won’t even listen when this comes straight from the mouths of Gazans: One brave Palestinian woman openly (and bravely) condemned Hamas for hoarding aid meant for civilians some months back.
If the Western world wants to help Palestinians who are being affected by this war, then leaders need to be clear-eyed about who the villain is: Hamas.
And urge Israel to defeat these murderous villains ASAP — not just to eliminate the threat to Israel, but for the sake of Gazans themselves.
