ON the morning of August 5, Mahmoud Alsaqqa was stuck at an Israeli military holding point with two trucks filled with vegetables.
The Oxfam aid worker was travelling to northern Gaza. And time was of the essence. Afterall, many Palestinians in the region haven’t seen fresh food for months and child malnutrition is skyrocketing.
This holding point in a military zone called Wadi Gaza was the first of many for Alsaqqa that morning, waiting hours for various scans and checks undertaken by the Israeli military.
But it only took a few minutes at this last one before he noticed hundreds of hungry Palestinians emerging from the south, the group quickly swarming the aid convoy and looting both trucks.
“As we were watching the scene, the Israeli forces were observing as well,” he said.
“They waited until the trucks were empty before giving us the green light to move.”
Oxfam has told The National that Israel obstructing aid supplies, alongside a breakdown in law and order amid an ongoing famine in Gaza, is making it increasingly difficult for organisations like Oxfam to get provisions to those most in need.
The aid group said that the use of holding points by the Israeli military, for example, slows down the convoys and leaves the trucks incredibly vulnerable to looting as they are, in essence, “sitting ducks”.
“I was deeply disturbed by what was happening outside in front of me. Our plan was to deliver this food to the starving people in the north who have not eaten fresh food for months,” Alsaqqa said.
“[But] this situation of restricting food and essential supplies for an entire population inevitably leads to a breakdown in law and order and also leads to new and distressing criminal behaviours among the people.”
He added: “The severe limitations imposed on Gaza have driven people to desperate measures to secure necessities for survival. This is a result of Israel's policies that squeeze the population into a pressure cooker situation. When people are pushed to extreme limits, they will do whatever it takes to protect and feed their families.”
Alsaqqa’s comments come after Israel’s far-right finance minister suggested last week that causing the starvation of Gaza’s population of more than two million Palestinians “might be just and moral” until hostages captured in Hamas’s attack on southern Israel are returned home.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a speech that Israel has no choice but to send humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“It’s not possible in today’s global reality to manage a war – no-one will allow us to starve two million people, even though that might be just and moral until they return the hostages,” he said at a conference in support of Jewish settlements.
Smotrich, a key partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, supports the reoccupation of Gaza, the rebuilding of Jewish settlements that were removed in 2005, and what he describes as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians out of the territory.
On Wednesday, the European Union condemned his remarks, noting that the “deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime”.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called the remarks “beyond ignominious”, saying “it demonstrates, once again, his contempt for international law and for basic principles of humanity”.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said “there can be no justification for Minister Smotrich’s remarks”.
“We expect the wider Israeli government to retract and condemn them,” he wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Siebert, called the remarks “unacceptable and appalling”.
“It is a principle of international law and of humanity to protect civilians in a war and to give them access to water and food,” he wrote on X.
The ongoing war sparked by Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The vast majority of its population has been displaced within the blockaded territory, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are packed into squalid tent camps.
The leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said in June that Gaza was at “high risk” of famine.
Aid organisations say efforts to deliver food and other assistance have been hindered by Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order.
Israel says it allows unlimited humanitarian aid to enter and blames UN agencies for failing to promptly deliver it.
