Hamas Raids UN Warehouse, Seizes Aid
By George Whitten, Jerusalem Bureau Chief
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (Worthy News) — United Nations aid workers said Thursday, February 5, they were struggling to provide aid to the desperately needy in the Gaza Strip after police forces from the ruling militant Hamas group stormed a U.N. warehouse.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) , which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees, said Hamas police seized aid supplies “by gunpoint” from its center in a Gaza refugee camp, amid mounting tensions between the agency and the Islamic rulers of the Palestinian enclave.
The UNRWA said it condemned the Hamas action “in the strongest terms.”
In a statement, monitored by Worthy News, UNRWA explained that Hamas confiscated about 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels meant to help hundreds of families in the Gaza City Beach Camp.
It was part of the emergency aid being distributed after Israel’s 22-day military offensive in Gaza that ended January 18, U.N. aid workers said. The UNRWA claims to provide food, education and health care to more than half of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents.
When Hamas initially tried to seize the humanitarian aid, UNRWA workers resisted the confiscation, Worthy News learned. However, Hamas police later returned and broke into the UNRWA warehouse and seized the aid threatening staff with their weapons, U.N. staff members said.
FIRST TIME
It was the first time that the United Nations has admitted to such seizures, despite previous reports of similar incidents, Israeli officials suggested.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) claimed that on “several occasions they’ve witnessed Hamas stealing aid such as flour and medicine to be sold on the black market”, IDF spokeswoman Avital Leibovitch told Worthy News.
Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Palestinian Minister for Social Affairs, said that Hamas seized “63 trucks delivering aid consisting of food and medicine” which were on their way to the UNRWA warehouses in January, according to the translation of Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam provided by Palestinian Media Watch.
In January, Worthy News reported the seizure of a Jordanian aid convoy by Hamas.
The European Union, which is involved in peace negotiations, had a guarded response to the crisis. “We are very concerned, but this is an isolated incident, we hope. We will react accordingly if this develops beyond an isolated incident,” said Alix de Mauny, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch. The Commission allocated 73 million Euros ($95 Million) in 2008 for humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
However the U.N. warned Hamas that this could change. “Does anyone really think that the Americans, who are our single largest donor, or the Europeans, who are our largest multinational donor, would give us aid in the generous way they do if they thought that aid would go to terrorists?” an angry U.N spokesman Christopher Gunness said.
The United States provided $562 Million in direct financial support in 2008, of which $148 million was provided to assist Palestinians through UNRWA, according to official estimates. Under U.S. law it is illegal to fund terrorism, and Hamas is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States State Department.
LIFE “MISERABLE”
Israeli Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog, who oversees humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, said the theft from UNRWA was “further proof that Hamas is continuing to make life miserable for the population of Gaza and will use any means to intensify its suffering.”
Israel would continue to demand that any aid being transferred to the Strip be “directed to the welfare of the civilian population only, without Hamas to benefit for it,” he added.
Hamas demanded an “immediate apology” from the U.N. for “spreading false news,” Hamas spokeman Taher Nunu said. However, Ahmad Kurd, the Hamas Minister of Social Affairs, did not deny that humanitarian aid was seized. He suggested he understoord the raid saying the UNRWA was not giving aid to the right people, but instead “to groups that tie their activities to political activism.”
UNRWA denied the charges, saying it distributes aid only directly to residents according to a list compiled by community leaders.