Since the onset of its genocide, Israel has persistently pushed a narrative that the famine devastating Gaza is not of its own making, but the result of “Hamas looting aid”.

This claim, repeated across mainstream media and parroted by officials, has been used to deflect responsibility for what many human rights experts have called a deliberate starvation campaign.

Even after Israel fully banned the entry of food, water, fuel, and medicine on March 2, Tel Aviv continued to maintain that Hamas looting, not Israeli policy, was to blame for the humanitarian catastrophe.

But that narrative has now been discredited by Israel’s internal reporting. Last week, the Israeli military admitted internally that out of 110 looting incidents they documented, none were carried out by Hamas.

Instead, the looting was done by “armed gangs, organised clans” and, to a lesser extent, starved civilians.

Those very gangs and clans are backed by Israel; they enjoy full Israeli army protection and operate in areas Israel deems “extermination zones”, where any Palestinian trying to enter would be killed or kidnapped on the spot.

The gangs had vanished during the two-month ceasefire but conveniently re-emerged as soon as Israel was pressured into allowing a limited trickle of aid to enter. The timing is no coincidence; Israeli policy has deliberately weaponised anarchy to preserve the conditions for starvation.

This pushed even the UAE to strongly condemn Israel after the army forced an Emirati aid convoy to drive through a “red zone” where Israel-backed gangs looted 23 out of 24 trucks.

So why does Israel continue to cling to a demonstrably false narrative while openly engineering a looting crisis through its proxies? Because the myth of “Hamas looting” serves a critical strategic purpose: to whitewash and legitimise a new plan that institutionalises starvation for blackmail, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and mass internment through a shell Israeli organisation.

This is coupled with another alarming tactic of recruiting warlords, drug dealers, and criminals to create a puppet “anti-terror” force.

Israel’s looting myth
The “looting” talking point is devoid of any logic, as Hamas would be able to do very little with thousands of tons of looted aid.

Israel and US Ambassador Mike Huckabee both claim Hamas uses the looted aid to buy new weaponry. But where would they buy such weapons from when Gaza is fully sealed off by Israel, and Rafah — the city of smuggling tunnels — is under full Israeli control?

Israel claims Hamas sells looted aid on the black market. But, again, what would they do with the money? Virtually nothing is allowed into Gaza except a trickle of food.

Israel also claims Hamas uses looted aid to recruit new militants, but Hamas doesn’t operate this way. The group depends on utmost secrecy and discipline in its operations.

Each new member passes through a long process of vetting, training, and tests to minimise the risk of infiltration. It would compromise Hamas to recruit people openly, whose only attachment to the group is bread rather than ideological commitment.

Perhaps most damning is that Israel has never captured a single instance of Hamas looting aid, despite subjecting Gaza to the most meticulous surveillance on earth. Israeli predator drones cover every inch of the enclave every minute of the day, yet there is nothing to show for Israel’s claims.

Hamas is also aware that hijacking and looting aid trucks could lead to Israel bombing the vehicles and diverting them from their predetermined route.

The Israeli army has done this on countless occasions when it fired at or bombed humanitarian convoys under the pretext that Hamas policemen came near the trucks. Ironically, those law enforcement officials were actually trying to prevent looting when they were targeted.

Israel’s allies reject the narrative
Israel’s strongest supporters have refuted the “Hamas looting” claim. President Joe Biden’s humanitarian envoy, David Satterfield, admitted in February of last year that “no Israeli official has . . . come to the administration with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN”.

Satterfield reiterated last Tuesday that Israel has never privately alleged or offered evidence of Hamas stealing aid from the UN and INGO channels. Israel’s ambassador to the EU, Haim Regev, said in mid-October 2023 that “there’s no evidence EU aid went to Hamas”.

Cindy McCain, World Food Programme’s chief and widow of one of the most pro-Israeli GOP senators, forcefully rejected Israel’s narrative on Sunday, saying that looting “doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas . . .  it has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death”.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported last week that “Israel has never presented evidence publicly or privately to humanitarian organisations or Western government officials to back up claims that Hamas had systematically stolen aid brought into Gaza”.

An internal memo jointly drafted by UN agencies and 20 INGOs in April, and viewed by The New Arab, stated that “there is no evidence of large-scale aid diversion”.

Gangs and scarcity are responsible for looting
While Israel failed to show any evidence of Hamas stealing aid, the only documented organised systematic looting happening in Gaza right now is by Israeli-backed criminal gangs who enjoy full protection from the Israeli army, according to the Washington Post, Financial Times, Ha’aretz, and the UN.

A UN memo said these gangs established a “military complex” in the heart of Rafah after Israel fully depopulated the city. Humanitarian officials say the looting often happens right in front of Israeli troops and tanks, less than 100m away, who take no action until the local police arrive, with Israeli troops then opening fire at them.

Israel not only provides protection and backing to these criminal gangs but has created the perfect conditions for looting to thrive through scarcity and a collapsing state of law and order.

Currently, a single bag of wheat flour sells for about 1,500 NIS ($425), which makes it profitable for gangs to loot and sell on the market. These astronomical prices are driven by scarcity after Israel banned all food from entering Gaza for nearly 80 days, then allowed less than 20 percent of what Gaza needs on a normal day for basic survival after intense international pressure.

During the ceasefire, however, when Israel was allowing 600 trucks to enter per day, prices went back to normal and looting disappeared because it was no longer profitable due to the abundance of food, and because the police were able to resume their work.

Manufactured crisis to advance genocide
The engineered looting crisis has long served as a convenient excuse to cover up the deliberate weaponisation of starvation against Gaza’s entire population, allowing Israel to distract from its restrictions on the entry of aid and the spread of famine by saying Hamas is to blame for stealing aid.

But now, this manufactured crisis is serving a second objective: to justify a dystopian ‘aid plan’ Israel is implementing in Gaza that has been condemned and boycotted by every UN agency and humanitarian organisation working in the enclave, as well as donor countries.

A joint UN-INGO memo warned that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation would facilitate the use of aid for forcible expulsion, by telling Gazans the only way they can receive food is by moving south to Rafah on Egypt’s border.

GHF, which Israeli opposition leaders said was an Israeli shell funded by Mossad, began its operations last Tuesday after being rocked by two scandals in one day.

GHF’s CEO had resigned on Sunday in protest of the organisation violating the principles of humanitarianism, while the organisation shut down its registered headquarters in Switzerland as soon as Swiss authorities launched an investigation.

Images coming out of the GHF’s militarised aid distribution site were immediately likened to concentration camps, where hundreds of emaciated Gazans were crowded into metal cages like cattle under the boiling sun, surrounded by armed US mercenaries, Israeli troops, and sand dunes.

Alarmingly, people who received aid noted the presence of Arabic speakers in addition to American mercenaries. Last week, the Israel-backed Islamic State-linked gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab emerged in Rafah again after a long disappearance.

Abu Shabab, a drug dealer and wanted criminal previously arrested multiple times by the local police, was the primary suspect in the systematic looting of aid under Israeli protection. This time, however, he emerged in a brand new uniform and military gear and started a Facebook page promoting himself in English and Arabic to mark a new “anti-terror” force operating in Israel-controlled Rafah.

Additional pictures viewed by The New Arab showed multiple armed men dressed in the same uniform as Abu Shabab armed with M-16s standing in front of a humanitarian convoy.

The unravelling of Israel’s “Hamas looting” narrative lays bare a chilling truth: starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage — it is a calculated weapon in a broader campaign of collective punishment and displacement.

By cultivating chaos, empowering criminal gangs, and then manipulating the humanitarian crisis they manufactured, Israel seeks to maintain extreme restrictions on aid, while externalising blame and avoiding accountability.

It is the machinery of genocide disguised in bureaucratic language and carried out under the watchful eyes of the world.

Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the European Union affairs manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The article was first published by The New Arab. On X at: @muhammadshehad2

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Residents of an informal Port Moresby settlement that was razed following the gang rape and murder of a woman by 20 men say they are being unfairly punished by Papua New Guinea authorities over alleged links to the crime.

Human rights advocates and the UN have condemned the killing but warned the eviction by police has raised serious concerns about collective punishment, violations of national law, police misconduct and governance failures.

A community spokesman said more than 500 people living at the settlement at the capital’s Baruni rubbish dump were forcibly evicted by the police in response to the killing of 32-year-old Margaret Gabriel on February 15.

Authorities accuse the settlement residents, who are primarily migrants from the Goilala district in Central Province, of harboring some of the men involved in her murder.

Prime Minister James Marape condemned Gabriel’s death as “inhuman, barbaric” and a “defining moment for our nation to unite against crime, to take a stand against violence”, the day after the attack.

He assured every effort would be made to prosecute those responsible and his “unwavering support” for the removal of settlements like Baruni, calling them “breeding grounds for criminal elements who terrorise innocent people.”

Gabriel was one of three women killed in the capital that week.

Charged with rape, murder
Four men from Goilala district and two from Enga province, all aged between 18 and 29, appeared in a Port Moresby court on Monday on charges of her rape and murder.

The case has again put a spotlight again on gender-based violence in PNG and renewed calls for the government to find a long-term solution to Port Moresby’s impoverished settlements.

Dozens of families, some of whom have lived in the Baruni settlement for more than 40 years, were forced out of their homes on February 22 and are now sleeping under blue tarpaulins at a school sports oval on the outskirts of the capital.

“My people are innocent,” Peter Laiam, a community spokesman and school caretaker, told BenarNews, adding that police continued to harass the community at their new location.

“They told me I had to move these people out in two weeks’ time or they will shoot us.”

Laiam said a further six men from the settlement were suspected of involvement in Gabriel’s death, but had not been charged, and the community has fully cooperated with police on the matter, including naming the suspects.

Authorities however were treating the entire population as “trouble makers,” Laiam added.

“They also took cash and building materials like corrugated iron roofing for themselves” he said.

No police response
Senior police in Port Moresby did not respond to ongoing requests from BenarNews for reaction to the allegations.

Assistant Commissioner Benjamin Turi last week thanked the evicted settlers for information that led to the arrest of six suspects, The National newspaper reported.

Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Junior defended the eviction at Baruni last month, telling EMTV News it was lawful and the settlement was on state-owned land.

Police used excavators and other heavy machinery to tear down houses at the Baruni settlement, with images showing some buildings on fire.

Residents say the resettlement site in Laloki lacks adequate water, sanitation and other facilities.

“They are running out of food,” Laiam said. “Last weekend they were washed out by the rain and their food supplies were finished.”

Separated from their gardens and unable to sell firewood, the families are surviving on food donations from local authorities, he said.

Human rights critics
The evictions have been criticised by human rights advocates, including Peterson Magoola, the UN Women Representative for PNG.

“We strongly condemn all acts of sexual and gender-based violence and call for justice for the victim,” he said in a statement last month.

“At the same time, collective punishment, forced evictions, and destruction of homes violate fundamental human rights and disproportionately harm vulnerable members of the community.”

Melanesian Solidarity, a local nonprofit, called on the government to ensure justice for both the murder victim and displaced families.

It said the evictions might have contravened international treaties and domestic laws that protect against unlawful property deprivation and mandate proper legal procedures for relocation.

The Baruni settlement, which is home primarily to migrants from Goilala district, was established with consent on the customary land of the Baruni people during the colonial era, according to Laiam.

Central Province Governor Rufina Peter defended the evicted settlers on national broadcaster NBC on February 20, and their contribution to the national capital.

“The Goilala people were here during pre-independence time. They are the ones who were the bucket carriers,” she said.

‘Knee jerk’ response
She also criticised the eviction by police as “knee jerk” and raised human rights concerns.

The Goilala community in Central Province, 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital, was the center of controversy in January when a trophy video of butchered body parts being displayed by a gang went viral, attracted erroneous ‘cannibalism’ reportage by the local media and sparked national and international condemnation.

The evictions at Baruni have touched off again a complex debate about crime and housing in PNG, the Pacific’s most populous nation.

Informal settlements have mushroomed in Port Moresby as thousands of people from the countryside migrate to the city in search of employment.

Critics say the impoverished settlements are unfit for habitation, contribute to the city’s frequent utility shortages, and harbour criminals.

Mass evictions have been ordered before, but the government has failed to enact any meaningful policies to address their rapid growth across the city.

While accurate population data is hard to find in PNG, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that the number of people living in Port Moresby is about 513,000.

Lack basic infrastructure
At least half of them are thought to live in informal settlements, which lack basic infrastructure like water, electricity and sewerage, according to 2022 research by the PNG National Research Institute.

A shortage of affordable housing and high rental prices have caused a mismatch between demand and supply.

Melanesian Solidarity said the government needed to develop a national housing strategy to prevent the rise of informal settlements.

“This eviction is a wake-up call for the government to implement sustainable urban planning and housing reforms rather than resorting to forced removals,” it said in a statement.

“We stand with the affected families and demand justice, accountability, and humane solutions for all Papua New Guineans.”

Stefan Armbruster, Sue Ahearn and Harry Pearl contributed to this story. Republished from BenarNews with permission. However, it is the last report from BenarNews as the editors have announced a “pause” in publication due to the US administration withholding funds.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz