Gaza gangs are ‘looting homes’ of absent owners
LOCAL GANGS in Gaza are looting Palestinian homes while their owners remained displaced in other parts of the strip, The Economist has reported.
Television sets, kitchen appliances and furniture have been stolen by groups armed with sticks and light weapons.
The loot often turns up in makeshift markets, where the victims of robbery have sometimes been able to buy back their possessions, including furniture, the magazine says.
Aid officials also told The Economist that criminal clans are known to have offered NGOs safe warehouses and merchants protection for their goods — for a fee.
On other occasions they arrange the theft of aid, which they later sell at extortionate prices.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has told the media that “anarchy reigns in areas that Israel’s military has cleared but not stabilised”.
Discussing a conversation this week between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sullivan said that the president had questioned whether Israel’s military plans were “sustainable” given the scale of Palestinian civilian casualties.
“A humanitarian crisis has descended across Gaza, and anarchy reigns in areas that Israel’s military has cleared but not stabilised,” Sullivan said.
“Instead of a pause to re-evaluate where things stand in the campaign and what adjustments are needed to achieve long-term success, instead of a focus on stabilising the areas of Gaza that Israel has cleared so that Hamas does not regenerate and retake territory that Israel has already cleared, the
Israeli government is now talking about launching a major military operation in Rafah.”
The Israel Defence Forces raid on Monday that cleared out Hamas terrorists from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was an example of Israel’s failure to secure territory already under its control, underlining why Jerusalem should reconsider the Rafah operation, Sullivan said.
“Israel cleared Shifa once,” he said. “Hamas came back into Shifa, which raises questions about how to ensure a sustainable campaign against Hamas so that it cannot regenerate, cannot retake territory and, from our perspective. That is the vital thing we need to focus on right now, rather than have Israel go smash into Rafah.”
Biden did not threaten to cut off military aid to Israel during the call, and US “red lines” are a media construction that does not reflect administration policy, Sullivan said.
He added that Biden’s concerns should not be understood as a lack of US commitment to root out Hamas.
“The president has rejected, and did again today, the straw man that raising questions about Rafah is the same as raising questions about defeating Hamas,” he said. “That’s just nonsense.”