President Joe Biden has made aid to Gaza a priority as the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on, despite the increasingly high financial cost, the threat to American troops, and how such aid has been hijacked by Hamas terrorists before. As The Times of Israel covered, which our sister site of Twitchy also picked up on, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller admitted on Thursday that Hamas was able to seize aid that was coming from Jordan to Gaza.
As the report mentioned:
According to Miller, the aid shipment was unloaded by the Jordanian military inside the Strip before being “picked up by a humanitarian implementer for distribution inside Gaza, and that aid was intercepted and diverted by Hamas on the ground in Gaza.”
“The UN is either in the process or has by now recovered that aid, but it was an unacceptable act by Hamas to divert this aid to begin with,” he said during a press briefing.
Miller added that UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, would likely issue a statement soon condemning the incident, indicating it was the organization from which Hamas stole the aid.
“If there’s one thing that Hamas could do to jeopardize the shipment of aid, it would be diverting it for their own use, rather than allowing it to go to the innocent civilians that need it,” he said, claiming this was the “first widespread case of diversion that we have seen” in Gaza.
Hamas held the aid trucks for “some time” before releasing them, according to Miller.
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Israel recently stepped up efforts to deliver aid by land and opened up new ground routes, including opening Erez to aid trucks on Wednesday. Washington has said aid delivery has increased significantly in recent weeks, but that more is needed.
A temporary pier is also being constructed by the US military to increase humanitarian aid deliveries, and is more than halfway complete, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
The subheadline for The Times of Israel's article notes, with added emphasis, that this was "the 'first widespread case of diversion' acknowledged by US."
There's been video evidence for months now of Hamas taking over aid meant for civilians and sold on the black market. The article also mentions the tricky way that the United States has tried to go about that narrative:
[Miller's] comments follow Israel’s long-standing contention that Hamas stockpiled supplies and kept them from increasingly desperate civilians. Footage from Gaza has shown gunmen, who were reportedly linked to the terror group, stealing trucks delivering humanitarian aid from Egypt.
In February, the US diplomat who was then involved in humanitarian assistance for Gaza denied allegations that Hamas stole aid and commercial shipments into the enclave, saying that no Israeli official had presented him or the Biden administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance.”
At the same time, he acknowledged that Hamas had used other aid delivery channels to “shape where and to whom assistance goes.”
That acknowledgment of how much control Hamas really has in the region is a pretty significant one.
When it comes to Miller expecting a statement from the UNRWA, that may be asking too much. There's evidence that the pro-Hamas agency of the anti-Israel United Nations has actually been involved with the terrorist group, and that this includes even holding one of the captives taken as a hostage on October 7.
As of early Friday afternoon, the most recent official statement posted to the UNRWA website is from Tuesday, April 30 and it highlights the introductory remarks from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini. There's plenty of sympathizing with Gazans and criticism about Israel's role in the conflict, but no update on hijacked aid.
Further, the UNRWA's X account also contains no mention of the aid that was intercepted by Gaza. Instead, the posts lament the situation in Gaza as a result of the Israel-Hamas conflict brought on by the brutal attack that Hamas perpetrated against Israel on October 7, demand more assistance for their region and agency, and call for a ceasefire.