\n\tLONDON: A French academic has said he witnessed Israel enabling the looting of aid trucks in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\n\tJean-Pierre Filiu spent more than a month in the Palestinian enclave from December 2024, which formed the basis for his book \u201cA Historian in Gaza,\u201d which was published this month in English.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe professor of Middle East studies at France\u2019s Sciences Po university was able to avoid detection by Israel despite a ban on international media entering Gaza.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHe claims in the book to have witnessed attacks by the Israeli military on aid convoys and their security staff guarding them from looters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHis testimony backs UN claims that attacks on police in Gaza by Israel aided looters at a time when mass hunger threatened much of the enclave.<\/p>\n
\n\tAn internal UN memo described the approach as \u201cpassive if not active benevolence\u201d toward looters.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn one incident Filiu described in the book,\u00a066 trucks carrying aid into Gaza from the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which were being guarded by Hamas, came under attack by Israel.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was one night and I was \u2026 a few hundred metres away. And it was very clear that Israeli quadcopters were supporting the looters in attacking the local security (teams),\u201d Filiu wrote, adding that the attack killed \u201ctwo local notables as they sat in their car, armed and ready to protect the convoy.\u201d In all, 20 trucks were then left unguarded and ransacked.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe (Israeli) rationale (was) to discredit Hamas and the UN at that time \u2026 and to allow (Israel\u2019s) clients, the looters, to either redistribute the aid to expand their own support networks or to make money out of reselling it in order to get some cash and so not depend exclusively on Israeli financial support,\u201d Filiu said.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn another incident, he described an attack by Israel on a route opened for aid groups to avoid areas where looting was rife.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe World Food Programme was trying to set up an alternative route to the coastal road and Israeli bombed the middle of the road \u2026 It was a deliberate attempt to put it out of action,\u201d he told The Guardian, adding that \u201canything that stood before\u201d in Gaza has been \u201cerased, annihilated\u201d by the war that began in October 2023.<\/p>\n
\n\tAround 70,000 Palestinians are believed to have been killed, with much of the enclave\u2019s infrastructure destroyed.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAny successful counterinsurgency anywhere over history \u2026 has to balance the military operation with some kind of political campaign to win hearts and minds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201c(Israel) didn\u2019t even pretend to do that in Gaza at any time, (but) Gaza is probably the place on Earth where Hamas is the most unpopular because in Gaza they know Hamas (and) don\u2019t have any illusions about the reality of Islamist domination and the brutality of its rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe added: \u201cI\u2019ve always been convinced that (the war in Gaza is) a universal tragedy. It\u2019s not one more Middle Eastern conflict.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a laboratory of a post-UN world, of a post Geneva convention world, of a post-declaration of human rights world, and this world is very scary because it\u2019s not even rational. It\u2019s just ferocious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted Israeli backing of the Popular Forces, an anti-Hamas group known to have looted aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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