Protesters prevent 51 aid trucks from entering Gaza, saying it’s ‘insane to aid the enemy’
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
Protesters at the border crossing with the Gaza Strip today prevented the entry of most of the dozens of trucks that arrived at the terminal carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt, slamming the entry of aid as long as Hamas terrorists continue to hold Israeli and foreign hostages, Hebrew media reports.
Only nine out of the 60 trucks that arrived today at the Kerem Shalom border crossing made it through, according to Ynet. The remaining 51 returned to Egypt after a six-hour wait at the crossing because hundreds of protesters from the Tsav 9 and Combatants’ Mothers groups, among others, physically blocked the trucks in an unauthorized protest action.
Another 106 trucks carrying aid crossed into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt, but only after they had been screened by Israel at the Nitzana Crossing, according to the report.
“It’s always insane to aid the enemy, but it’s especially zany to do it today, one day after they killed 24 of our soldiers and as they’re preparing to continue firing into our cities — even as they’re holding more than 130 of our hostages,” one protester, Reut Ben Haim, a mother of eight from Netivot, tells The Times of Israel.
The United States is pressing Israel to let in more aid to Gaza, according to a New York Times report Monday. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes during the war are living in tent cities in the southern Gaza Strip in conditions that the Red Cross said amount to a “desperate humanitarian crisis.”
Allowing aid into Gaza “is vital for ensuring international support,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said during a meeting with relatives of hostages who challenged him on this point.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi accused Israel today of holding up aid to pressure Hamas into releasing its hostages at the expense of the civilian population.
“This is a form of pressure on the Gaza Strip and its people over the conflict and the release of hostages. They are using this as a pressure tool on the people of the Strip,” Sissi told a gathering of military officers and state officials in Cairo.
