Israel announced that it would start allowing the UN to bring in aid to the Gaza Strip on July 27, 2025. The Gaza Government Media Office said on Monday that 674 trucks had entered in 8 days, adding that the quantity Israel has allowed does not meet 14% of civilians’ daily needs. But beyond the fact that the amount falls dangerously short of what is needed, the trucks that do enter are immediately beset by organized looters and large crowds of starving civilians who take everything off the truck before it has a chance to get to distribution centers, local sources told Mondoweiss.
During almost every incident in which crowds of civilians rush aid trucks entering the Strip, the Israeli army opens fire on them, with dozens of deaths recorded among aid-seekers each day, a local government spokesperson told Mondoweiss.
On Sunday, July 31, the Israeli army killed 58 people in the Sudaniyya area and injured 648 others. Most of the injured, who were waiting for aid to enter through the northern Zikim crossing, were shot in the head and chest, according to the Ministry of Health. On the same day, 112 trucks entered the Strip, but most of them were looted. On Monday, August 4, 18 people were killed in the same area.
“Since July 27, 384 people have been killed while waiting for aid in Gaza, and 2,546 people were injured,” the Government Media Office told Mondoweiss. “All the aid trucks were looted as a direct result of the security chaos engineered by the Israeli army.”
The Media Office described the “engineered chaos and starvation” as a systematic policy that aims to “dismantle Palestinian society and undermine its resilience.”
Amjad Shawa, head of the Network of Non-Governmental Organizations in Gaza, considers the new entry of trucks as misleading to the international community. “Nothing has changed in the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The trucks enter for a specific number of people and from specific UN organizations, like the World Food Program and the World Health Organization,” Shawa told Mondoweiss. “We need over a thousand trucks every day to face the dire conditions in Gaza.”
Shawa explains that these UN organizations are facing stringent limitations on their work to sabotage the humanitarian network in the Strip. “The objective is to redirect it all to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” he said.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is the controversial Israeli-backed and U.S.-run organization that replaced the UN in May. The organization allegedly began distributing aid to the Gaza population, but has been accused of setting up “death traps” for Palestinians that use aid as “bait” to lure them into GHF distribution centers. There, the Israeli army opens fire on aid-seekers, resulting in numerous recorded “aid massacres.” As of the time of writing, 1,561 people have been killed at GHF sites or while waiting for aid trucks in the north, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Despite reports of improvements in the entry of aid, Nahed Sheiber, the head of the Private Transport Trucks Association in Gaza, denies that there has been any significant improvement. “Israel is trying to promote a situation on the ground that does not exist,” Sheiber told Mondoweiss. “One hundred trucks enter Gaza daily, sometimes fewer. Forty trucks from Zikim, 25-40 from Khan Younis, and 10 from Netzarim. The same people who come daily to the entrance point are the only people who receive aid from those trucks.”
Sheiber added that those who make their way to the distribution points always do so while risking their lives, knowing that the Israeli army will likely shoot at them. “The rest of the population that refuses to go due to the danger keeps starving.”
Israeli policy of ‘self-distribution‘
Sheiber explains that aid trucks entering Gaza move in accordance with Israeli directives, which drivers are not allowed to violate. They are only permitted to stop at designated points to let people take aid. These points include al-Khalidi Street for the Zikim trucks and Street No. 5 for the Khan Younis trucks. According to Sheiber, the Israeli army gives instructions to the WFP, which then conveys them to truck drivers. But in practice, the WFP is unable to reach any of its storage facilities in Gaza.
Sheiber explains that not all the people who grab the aid off the trucks are individual aid-seekers — some are organized looters who steal it and resell it on the black market. “The same people rush the aid trucks every day,” he said.
“Israel calls it ‘self-distribution.’ But it is looting,” Sheiber says. “When some people come with minivans or pickup trucks and load them with aid, this is not ‘self-distribution.’ And when someone comes and takes aid, and the next day also comes and takes the same aid, while thousands of other people cannot reach it, this is considered looting.”
He confirms that this Israeli method of distribution aims to spread chaos and infighting among Palestinians. “Israelis used the allegation of Hamas stealing aid to change the entire aid distribution system. But it’s a lie.”
On July 27, the New York Times reported that two senior Israeli military officials and two other officials “involved in the matter” said there is no proof that Hamas routinely steals aid in Gaza.
The New York Times article goes on to report that the Israeli officials said the UN aid delivery system “was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.”
Sheiber confirms that the UN system — specifically, UNRWA — has over 75 years of experience distributing aid to Palestinian families. OCHA and the WFP, however, are the only UN organizations currently allowed to bring in limited aid quantities. “These organizations are new, and they used to help a small sector of the Palestinian population,” Sheiber explains. “Now they’re dealing with the entire population, and they can’t handle it. UNRWA, on the other hand, has the data for all Palestinians, and it is able to distribute aid to all families.”
Unlike the WFP and OCHA, Sheiber says UNRWA owns 12 distribution centers across the Gaza Strip, all equipped with staff and space for distribution.
The goal was always starvation
In light of the absence of evidence to back up Israeli claims of Hamas theft of aid, additional evidence has been brought to light this week purporting to show leaked documents from Israel’s war cabinet proving that the objective of the blockade was to cause starvation in Gaza in order to instigate revolts against Hamas.
Since Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas in March 2025 and cut off all food from the Strip, the Israeli army also worked to sow chaos by arming gangs that loot food and aid. The army also systematically targeted and killed members of the civilian branches of the Hamas government, which maintained a semblance of law and order in Gaza and discouraged the looting of food. Israel began to target personnel that had been tasked with protecting aid and stopping looters, creating a power vacuum in Gaza that Israel hoped would be filled by lawless armed gangs like that of Yasser Abu Shabab, who is based in eastern Rafah and preparing a concentration camp for Palestinians.
Also read: Inside the Hamas unit fighting Israeli-armed gangs that loot aid and facilitate displacement in Gaza.
Sheiber says that civil society organizations, in cooperation with the WFP, finally secured the limited entry of aid trucks in late May, around the same time that the GHF became operational. While Hamas’s security forces had been crippled and were unable to protect these convoys from looters, various clans from Gaza stepped in to fill the vacuum and control the chaos.
“Israel refused these efforts and prevented aid entry for two months after,” Sheiber says. In July, Israel allowed the aid trucks to enter again after international uproar over starvation in Gaza had reached its peak. Members of the Gaza clans were securing the aid trucks that entered, but Israel targeted them and killed over 10 clan volunteers.
The Government Media Office stated on July 28, 2025, that Israel had continued to prevent the entry of aid trucks into the Strip until it was able to kill all security personnel affiliated with the clans. “After confirming their death, the Israeli army allowed the trucks to enter Gaza, only to be looted by gangs and thieves under full Israeli protection.”
Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X at @Tareqshajjaj.
Thank you for the excellent article.
A comment about wording: As the headline reads, Israel claims that it is allowing aid. I realize that this wording is so common as to be invisible, but in my view we should stop using it (like so much of language commonly used for Palestine). To “allow” something plants the mindset that the entity doing the “allowing” has such authority. But Israel has no such right. It has, rather, been blocking aid, and its claim now is that it is blocking less. Certainly most MW readers know what’s happening no matter the wording, but such wording has a key effect on the pubic’s understanding of what is happening, and better yet if it is geared for them too.
In Shaw’s play “Man and Superman,” Horace Malone, an Irishman, says that his father died during the starvation. Not famine. He says that when there is food in the country — Ireland was exporting wheat to England in the 1840s — it’s not a famine. It’s a starvation.
There is no famine in Gaza. It’s a starvation.
Thank you Tareq, Al Jazeera filmed more revolting Israeli psychotic children-of-the-corn “youth” blocking aid trucks….while singing “May Palestine’s name be wiped out”. 8/6/25
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/8/6/israeli-settlers-block-gaza-bound-aid-trucks#flips-6376623923112:0
Israeli settlers block Gaza-bound aid trucksIsraeli settlers attacked an aid convoy for the second time in days, delaying 30 trucks from Jordan on their way to Gaza. Video shows settlers chanting “May Palestine’s name be wiped out”. Jordan condemned the assault, accusing Israel of failing to stop repeated settler attacks.