OPINION: Even corruption is exploited in Gaza

The nightly TV pictures from beleaguered Gaza leave little to the imagination. The distress and agony of its people are palpable; the images of hunger and death – with no end in sight – make the world recoil in horror at the persecution. And amid all the chaos, volunteers and medics and aid workers strive nobly to bring a measure of comfort to blameless victims.
But human nature being human nature, there is another side to the coin of compassion.
Within the enclave itself, there are those only too ready to profiteer from the suffering and to enrich themselves on the back of the ill fortune of their brethren. With the tacit support of Israel, these mafia-like clans exploit every opportunity to make themselves wealthy at the expense of their distressed countrymen. Immune from the control of Hamas, which gives them a wide berth, these Gazan clans have for many years been power brokers, but now, with the territory in turmoil, they have become even more brazen than before.
Criminality will always find willing hands to do its dirty work, regardless of the cost in human misery, and Gaza is no exception. The distribution of humanitarian aid within Gaza, even when it gets through the border crossings, is a massive problem. The criminal families, or clans, who control the region are adept at interrupting and diverting aid. The result is that aid agencies have been compelled to actually employ the clans to protect and help distribute food to the starving people of the strip.
So corrupt has the system become, albeit unavoidably, that in some cases the criminal families are able to offer aid agencies safe warehousing and protection for the goods for an appropriate fee. Otherwise, they arrange the theft of the aid, which they later sell on at extortionate prices.
Televised images of armed men, brandishing sticks and guns and riding atop humanitarian trucks, have been cited by Israel as examples of Hamas stealing aid relief, but such claims have been dismissed by aid workers as bogus. The armed protectors were, rather, clan members recruited by the agencies themselves to protect food from desperate crowds who might ransack the lorries.
What distressed humanitarian workers most was the apparent complicity of so-called rival players in the control of Gaza. Israel, it is well known, allows favourable treatment of certain Palestinian business interests, with the connivance of Hamas. Aid workers cite documented cases of trucks owned by favoured Palestinians being allowed to cross from Israel carrying commercial goods while, at the same time, humanitarian aid was being blocked.
One of the most egregious examples of shameless corruption came in the early days of the conflict when the population of Gaza city were ordered to abandon their homes and to move, en masse, south to the already overcrowded Rafah and the coastal strip.
Within days, their homes had been looted and ransacked. Everything of value was stolen, from fridges to kitchen appliances to furniture – stolen not by the invading Israelis, but by the Palestinian Gazans who roamed the city, stealing the possessions of their departed neighbours. Months later, the stolen goods would turn up on the street markets of Rafah and the south, where the former owners could buy back their own property.
For the crooks who run Gaza, the less humanitarian aid that gets through, the better. In that way, black market prices can be hiked up and profits extorted, regardless of the human cost. The aid agencies, on the other hand, maintain that the only solution is to flood Gaza with aid, ensuring that supply will easily exceed demand.
But they too have come to suspect that there may be more than one vested interest in keeping the people in a state of near starvation.