No Evidence Hamas is ‘Stealing’ Aid to Gaza – US Special Envoy
No Israeli official has presented him or the Biden Administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance”, David Satterfield said.
Once again, US Special Envoy for the Middle East Humanitarian Issues, David Satterfield, asserted that there is no evidence that Hamas or any other Palestinian Resistance groups, are ‘stealing’ or diverting aid that is being delivered to Gaza.
Though Israel is allowing anywhere between 2 to 5 percent of the total humanitarian needs of the devastated Gaza population, Israeli government officials and media continue to claim that Hamas is stealing the aid for its own purposes.
No Israeli official has presented him or the Biden Administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance”, Satterfield said during a talk hosted by the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday.
This is not the first time, however, that Satterfield made similar comments. On November 4 last year, the envoy told reporters in the Jordanian capital, Amman, that, according to Reuters, “those distributing aid in Gaza had not reported aid being diverted since trucks resumed crossing the Egypt-controlled Rafah gate on October 21.”
Several international organizations and officials have reported that famine is already ravaging the population of Gaza, especially in the north, where little aid has arrived since the start of the Israeli genocide on the Strip.
Immediately after October 7, Israel used food, fuel, medicine, and other urgent supplies as a pressure card on the Palestinian people in the besieged Strip.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated on October 9, adding: There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,985 Palestinians have been killed, and 68,883 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
(The Palestine Chonicle)
