Disappearance of local Gaza police disrupting aid delivery - report

Delivery of badly-needed humanitarian aid in Gaza is complicated by the disappearance of blue-uniformed local police, said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Tuesday. 

Israel considers the local police force to work hand-in-hand with the Hamas terror group's rule in Gaza. In response to the report of the deadly strike on a local police vehicle, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told the U.S. paper that the army is targeting Hamas terrorists who pose a threat. 

Subsequently, uniformed officers have reportedly disappeared from the streets of the enclave. This has undermined aid delivery in Gaza, as the convoys that police once guarded have become more vulnerable to looters, a United Nations (UN) official told WSJ.

U.S. and UN officials told the paper that local police have stopped showing up for work, fearing attacks from the IDF on the one hand, and gangs of looters on the other.

Earlier on Monday, security sources told i24NEWS that humanitarian aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip were being seized by armed men, allegedly Hamas terrorists.

U.S. and Egyptian officials have been discussing a possible solution "under which the police would return to work but not in uniform and carrying only batons in return for a promise from Israel that they wouldn’t be attacked if they are guarding aid convoys," according to a UN official and a senior Egyptian official familiar with the talks. Neither Israel nor the police are said to have agreed to the deal.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinians (UNRWA), on Monday said that aid entering Gaza had dropped by half in February, compared with the month before. "Aid was supposed to increase not decrease to address the huge needs of 2 million Palestinians in desperate living conditions."

"Among the obstacles: lack of political will, regular closing of the crossing points & lack of security due to military operations and collapse of civil order," Lazzarini wrote in a post on X.

The statement was followed by a sharp response from Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT): "If UNRWA wasn’t such a failure logistically, more aid would reach the people of Gaza."

Much is at stake, as the Israeli public clamors for the return of all the hostages in Gaza, while Israel's war cabinet seeks to move into a ground operation in Rafah to dismantle the last remaining Hamas stronghold. But Israel faces heavy international pressure not to conduct a ground maneuver in the southern Gaza city where over a million refugees are located, particularly as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches. U.S. President Joe Biden said he hoped a ceasefire deal could be reached within a week, but reports suggest multiple obstacles remain in the negotiations process.

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