The Palestinian political faction Fatah charged on air that Hamas had deliberately killed aid workers, stolen aid and manufactured a food crisis in Gaza, according to a Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) investigation published on Sunday.
A Fatah TV anchor reported that Hamas had attacked aid workers, stolen food and water and caused food prices to skyrocket in the Gaza Strip – which PMW said constituted a triple crime.
“Hamas’ persecution of any party who is a source for distributing the [humanitarian] aid or securing it began from the start of the war, as Hamas persecuted well-known figures and teams of volunteers on the ground in mid-October [2023],” the anchor said. ”It attacked them and killed some of them for two reasons: Firstly, to prevent any activity by any [other] party in the Gaza Strip; and secondly, to ensure Hamas control over the aid and its storage, which of course leads to these crazy and unreal prices that no one can pay in the shadow of this destruction.
“After the occupation bombed storehouses controlled by Hamas, the accumulation of tons of various food and aid products that Hamas had taken exclusivity over became clear, at a time when the Gaza Strip is suffering from hunger.”
Following the anchor’s comments, footage from an Al-Jazeera interview was played which showed a woman in the enclave complaining that “the aid isn’t reaching all the people” because the aid “is all to their [own] homes. Let Hamas catch me and shoot me and do what they want to me.”
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza
Despite a surplus of evidence indicating that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza, The European Union's foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell claimed last month that Israel is not doing enough to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid for Gazans, according to Reuters.
In April, the White House also claimed that Israel had not done enough to ensure that enough humanitarian aid was entering Gaza.
Palestinian civilians complained to the IDF that Hamas stole aid, The Jerusalem Post reported in January, alongside recordings of civilian testimonies.
In one recorded call, a Gazan civilian testified that Hamas murdered his cousin because he tried to seek help from UNRWA. In another conversation, a civilian said he does not leave his home because he fears Hamas will seize it and use the property to fire toward Israel and destroy his house.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has previously pushed for Islamic groups to make donations to Gaza as a form of “financial jihad” against Israel.
“Dear brothers and sisters, let us call this 'financial jihad.' The Islamic nation does not make 'donations,'” Haniyeh told a conference in Qatar. "This is not just a humanitarian issue, despite its immense importance and Gaza's need for any aid it can get. This is financial jihad. We should revive this principle of Islamic jurisprudence in our Islamic nation—the notion of waging jihad with one's life and one's money."