IDF: Gaza now flooded with food and fuel

The excessive aid will help Hamas regroup, the army warns, endangering efforts to bring peace to the area.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Gaza Strip has been inundated with food and fuel since the Israel-Hamas cease-fire was declared six weeks ago, and this will lead to the rejuvenation of the terrorist organization, IDF sources told Walla on Wednesday.

On average, 83 tons of gas and 82,000 gallons of diesel are trucked into Gaza each day.

“The Palestinians are the ones who determine the volume of diesel and gas that enters,” a military source told Walla. “In addition, the transfer depends on the Egyptians, who send drivers and tankers from Egypt.”

“But the worst thing about this whole story is that they no longer have storage space, and in the past week, more than once, they returned full tankers to Israel because they did not have the capacity to store [it].”

In addition, 600 trucks full of humanitarian aid enter Gaza every day after being checked for contraband by Israeli security, according to figures provided by the Operations Division of the General Staff.

This amount of aid is “disproportionate,” the source noted, with the volume of goods “not only above local consumption” but – like the fuel – it is “above their ability to store the aid in a reasonable manner.”

There is so much food that their distribution centers have been closed, the report said.

Video evidence is abundant online of the profusion of goods in Gazan marketplaces and even the ready availability of such luxury items as golden iPhones in the area where Israel was allegedly starving people to death.

The IDF sources said that the huge inflow is a result of international and American pressure on Israel, but its end result will harm rather than help the UN-backed Trump plan to demilitarize the Strip in order to bring peace to the region.

This is because all this aid will enable Hamas to survive “for a very long time in its underground networks even if the crossings are closed,” the report said.

While Hamas signed onto the American-brokered peace plan, which calls for it to give up its weapons and have nothing to do with governing the Strip, senior officials of the terrorist group have said repeatedly over recent weeks that they would not disarm.

Israel has insisted that if the international force envisioned in the plan to oversee Hamas’ disarmament does not materialize or refuses to carry out its task, the IDF will use all the force necessary to do the job as part of its responsibility to bring lasting security to Israel’s citizens.