1. Aid organizations are refusing to cooperate with COGAT on coordinating deliveries of aid trucks that have already been brought into Gaza
2. Trucks bringing in commercial goods are not being counted in their statistics.
UN OCHA's latest report admits the last point, and buries it: "The amount of food and other aid entering Gaza, already insufficient to meet the soaring needs, has further shrunk since 7 May, with a daily average of 58 humanitarian aid trucks reaching Gaza between 7 and 28 May compared with a daily average of 176 aid trucks between 1 April and 6 May. These figures exclude private sector cargo and fuel. "
But that private sector cargo includes plenty of food. The amount of food going into gaza has increased, not decreased, since May 7.
Here was my chart showing the number of trucks the NGOs and NYT are counting, and the actual number entering Gaza.
By refusing to count those thousands of trucks of goods being brought into Gaza, the media and the NGOs are deliberately misleading the world and demonizing Israel.
In fact, Israel has changed the paradigm of how to deliver goods to Gaza, and over the past month (after some initial speedbumps) things are more efficient than they were before.
The commercial trade is the key.
Before, the only source for commercial trucks into Gaza came from a single Egyptian company that had a monopoly on commercial trade. Al Jazeera, in a report on the high cost of food in Gaza markets shortly before Israel took control of the Rafah crossing, quoted a seller saying "one company alone controls the items that enter, so it prohibits what it wants and allows what it wants, according to its interests. The presence of meat in all of Gaza became linked to [that company's] approval to bring it in, and the interruption of fruits came after that company banned its entry into the Strip."
Now, there are lots of commercial trucks entering Gaza, and the prices in the markets have gone way down.
The NGOs claim that they cannot deliver the goods already in Gaza because of how dangerous it is, or they claim that Israel is impeding them. Yet the commercial trucks are successfully reaching all of Gaza, according to COGAT.
Since reporters aren't interested in the story, we can only speculate as to why this is.
I would guess that there is a combination of factors that account for this. The commercial traders have their own security. They have financial incentive to take risks. Their trucks are probably not marked with giant logos that tell Gazans that "here's the food you are supposed to get for free, come and get it."
It is also hard to escape the conclusion that Hamas was embedded in the old system where there was a bottleneck of all goods entering Gaza and Hamas could freely confiscate what it wanted and tax the rest. The NGOs worked well with the corrupt system which essentially ensured Hamas would maintain control indefinitely. It worked for seven months, and finally Israel decided to replace Rafah with its own crossings that have higher capacity and no corruption. Rafah could re-open anytime Egypt allows it to, but Egypt profited off the old system as well and has little incentive to support a system where it cannot skim off millions of dollars.
Notice that there has not been a single reported case of starvation since February even though the "experts" had predicted famine well before today. The commercial goods entering Gaza is one big reason.
So the NGOs are pivoting from "food" to "medicine," saying that Israel is stopping lifesaving equipment. I have no idea if this is true - they appear sometimes to discuss specific hospitals that are in areas meant for evacuation - but the answer is, again, capitalism.
Instead of NGOs trying to do the very difficult logistics work, they can work with the private sector to arrange to bring in what they need, when they need it.
And it is not only my idea. The Gisha NGO made this demand from Israel in January:
* Israel must allow the entry of commercial goods to the private sector in GazaRestoring private sector activity through Kerem Shalom is an essential step towards increasing residents’ access to commodities. It would enable aid agencies to resume purchasing from the private sector within the Strip, facilitate distribution of goods throughout Gaza, and allow aid agencies to provide aid in different ways, such as through distribution of vouchers for purchase of food and other supplies.
It would be much easier for the aid agencies to administer a voucher system than to try to do everything end to end, which as we've seen, they are ill-equipped to do.
If they are offering money for medicine and equipment, the traders will be happy to do the logistics to bring them in. It is a much more efficient system and far less prone to abuse and corruption.
It is hard not to conclude that the aid agencies prefer the abuse and corruption.
Too bad the media is not interested in reporting about this and researching this further. If there is any consistency in reporting, it is that anything that benefits Israel and hurts Hamas is automatically considered bad.
