UN helps Hamas oppress Gazans

Andrew Tobin writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the United Nations’ negative impact on the Middle East.

Every day this week, hundreds of U.N. trucks stacked with pallets of humanitarian aid have exited Israeli-patrolled routes and rumbled into population centers across the Gaza Strip, where Israel has implemented daily pauses in military operations.

Many of the trucks, operating under enhanced Israeli protections introduced on Sunday, have not reached U.N. warehouses, according to Gazans on the ground. Armed Hamas militants have hijacked the trucks, the people said, and what aid has arrived at the warehouses has disappeared into a patronage system controlled by Hamas.

Most Gazans have been forced to buy the aid at exorbitant prices from merchants hand-picked and taxed by Hamas.

“Fifty trucks arrived yesterday at warehouses in Gaza City, and Hamas stole all of the aid,” said Moumen Al-Natour, a 30-year-old lawyer in the Gazan capital, on Tuesday. “Today, the aid went on sale in the black markets at very high prices.”

Al-Natour said a childhood friend, seeking to feed his family, joined a hungry mob trying to loot the trucks and was trampled to death along with others.

Gazans and Israeli military officers say this has been the reality in Gaza since fighting resumed in March. Hamas exerts near-total control over U.N.-led aid operations and seizes nearly all the incoming food to feed its members and loyalists and finance its terrorist regime, according to the people. Rather than confront the problem, U.N. officials have effectively aligned with Hamas, prolonging the war and the suffering of Gazans.

“Hamas has unfortunately been able to infiltrate the mechanism of the United Nations for a long time,” said Al-Natour. “They take all the aid for their own people and leave nothing for the civilians. This is how they maintain their criminal government even as their popularity has collapsed.”

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