(Image Credit: Screenshot from video by Abdel Qader Sabbah)
Influential clans, tribes, and community leaders in Gaza have joined forces to launch an independent effort to protect aid convoys and to prevent chaos and looting. The endeavor comes one month after the U.S. and Israel launched a so-called “aid distribution” project that has enabled Israeli forces to kill starving Palestinians every day as they desperately try to get food to feed their families. Since the beginning of the “aid distribution” charade, Israeli forces have killed at least 549 people.
On Tuesday, the National Gathering of Palestinians Tribes, Clans, and Families convened a meeting in Gaza City to launch the initiative. “These trucks arriving in besieged Gaza—which has been starved for 90 days by our enemy—must reach their rightful recipients, the needy,” said Abu Salman al-Mughni, a tribal leader. “They must not go to a corrupt group of thieves and rogue merchants to be sold in the markets at exorbitant prices that no one can afford. For this reason, the tribes, from all factions, have united to secure these trucks, ensuring they reach the warehouses and are then distributed fairly to all our people.”
The effort succeeded in securing a rare shipment of dozens of UN aid trucks that entered through the Zikim crossing on Wednesday; passed through Rashid street, a coastal road, without incident; and arrived at UN warehouses where people lined up to receive the aid. The tribes and community leaders prevented crowds from approaching the area the trucks passed through by erecting a series of barricades and forming human chains. Men associated with the tribes climbed atop the trucks—some armed with rods and others with guns—to escort the trucks to the warehouses.
The process stood in stark contrast to previous scenes where, absent any distribution system, thousands of desperate people overwhelmed aid convoys, with Israeli soldiers opening fire indiscriminately, killing dozens of Palestinians on a daily basis.
“We advise everyone to take a firm stand with their sons and youth to prevent them from heading to the death traps,” Abu Samed Abu Rawaa, another tribal leader involved in the effort, told Drop Site. “We are the protective shield. Everyone must understand that it is the occupier who seeks to spread chaos—they are the ones who want our people to appear this way…to portray our people as barbaric.”
