Is all aid entering Gaza being inspected for weapons by Israel? At least some appears to go straight through Rafah ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, January 20, 2025

Is all aid entering Gaza being inspected for weapons by Israel? At least some appears to go straight through Rafah

This photo bothers me a great deal.

This and many other photos taken yesterday indicate that "humanitarian aid" is bring transported directly into Gaza from Egypt without going through the extensive inspections that are done at the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

This is the Rafah crossing normally open only for people. The gate on the right that the trucks are going through is only opened for exceptional circumstances and, officially, those goods are inspected by the Egyptian army or the NGOs there. Israel is not in the loop.

The Kerem Shalom crossing has an opening from the Egyptian side. It is two miles to the south of the Rafah crossing. When I visited there over ten years ago, it was merely a dirt road from Egypt blocked by a cheap fence and a mound of earth. Satellite photos taken recently show that there is little (if any) infrastructure on the Egyptian side of Kerem Shalom.

The the past seven months hundreds of trucks of aid from Egypt has gone through Israel where they were inspected at Kerem Shalom for the south and Crossing 96 for northern Gaza.

The Egyptian Gazette, on the other hand, reports:

The flow of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip began on Sunday with the first moments of the ceasefire taking effect, facilitated through the Rafah Border Crossing.

A source in North Sinai confirmed that approximately 300 aid trucks entered through the Rafah crossing en route to the Al-Auja and Kerem Shalom crossings, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported on Tuesday.

Of these, 250 trucks are set to reach the Al-Auja crossing and 50 to the Kerem Shalom crossing for inspection before entering Gaza as an initial batch. Meanwhile, hundreds of additional trucks remain stationed at the Rafah crossing, awaiting the green light to proceed.

The trucks carried large quantities of relief supplies, including food, fuel, and medical supplies, tailored to meet local needs in coordination between the Egyptian Red Crescent, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and security authorities.

This makes it sound like most trucks do get inspected by Israel, but it makes no sense that the trucks directly entering Gaza are being routed back outside and then into Gaza again. The "Al Auja crossing" is the Nitzana crossing between Israel and Egypt, 25 miles to the south of Rafah. There is no way trucks enter Gaza and then go back out to Nitzana.

Reuters reported, "The aid trucks were using the Kerem Shalom entry point pending completion of maintenance at the Rafah border crossing into southern Gaza from Egypt, the sources said." But again, the photos and videos at Rafah tell a different story.

The best I can guess is that some goods are getting routed through Israel for inspection but others, including fuel and at least some dry goods, are being allowed to enter Gaza directly through Rafah.

There is no question that the goods entering Gaza are being skimmed or taken wholesale by Hamas before they get to the people. Hamas maintains its economic strength through this aid. The international community has been doing everything they could to stymie Israel from blocking Hamas from stealing the aid.

Egyptian authorities control Rafah, and are said to do their own inspections there. However, there are clearly no giant X-ray machines like Israel has in Rafah. Egyptian officials are also subject to bribes and the entire crossing regime is corrupt, as we saw with the huge fees Egyptian officials extorted from Gazans trying to leave.

I have seen no direct evidence that weapons have been smuggled into Gaza through Rafah between October 7 2023 and May 2024 when Israel took control of the corridor. The IDF is still there, at least for now, but again they do not have the facilities to inspect trucks inside Gaza.

COGAT has not answered by queries about this as of this writing.

Small arms and Iranian cash can certainly be hidden in the large containers of aid we are seeing going straight into Gaza.