Clan leaders in Gaza denied on Thursday that armed men who were seen riding atop trucks of humanitarian aid in the Strip were Hamas operatives, saying instead that they were protecting the aid from being stolen, after Israel scaled back aid deliveries to the territory over the assertion that Hamas operatives had returned to stealing the supplies.
Earlier on Thursday, after images were circulated of masked men on aid trucks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declared in a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz that there was evidence of Hamas once again taking control of aid entering the enclave’s north.
They said that the Israel Defense Forces had been instructed to present a plan to prevent this from happening within the next 48 hours.
Following the joint statement and a separate Channel 12 report claiming that all aid deliveries had been halted due to concerns that Hamas was stealing aid, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer told reporters that aid was continuing to enter the Strip from the south. While he declined to specify whether deliveries to the north had been stopped, two officials confirmed to Reuters that they had been.
At the same time, the Higher Commission for Tribal Affairs, which represents influential clans in Gaza, denied that the masked men in the images were Hamas operatives, and said the trucks had been protected as part of an aid security process, managed “solely through tribal efforts.”
