Palestinian truckers fear for safety after Israelis attack Gaza aid convoys
Palestinian hauliers have said they feared for the security of aid convoys to Gaza, a day after Israeli settlers wrecked trucks carrying humanitarian supplies bound for the besieged enclave, which is on the cusp of famine.
Footage circulated on social media showed at least one burning truck while other images showed trucks wrecked and stripped of their loads, which lay strewn over the road near Tarqumiyah Israeli military checkpoint outside Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
“Yesterday there was coordination for 70 trucks of aid to go the Gaza Strip,” Waseem al-Jabari, head of the Hebron Food Trade Association, told Reuters. “While the trucks were uploaded with products at the crossing settlers attacked the trucks and they destroyed the products and set fire in trucks,” he said, saying Israeli soldiers had stood by as the attack took place.
Palestinians and human rights groups have long accused the Israeli military and police of deliberately failing to intervene when settlers attack Palestinians in the West Bank. Adel Amer, a member of the West Bank-based hauliers’ union, said around 15 trucks had been damaged by Israeli protestors who beat some drivers and caused about two million dollars worth of damage.
“The drivers are now refusing to take goods to Gaza because they’re afraid,” he said. “It’s a disaster here because of the settlers.” Even when the military was present, the convoys were still at risk, he said. “The army says we cannot do anything to the settlers.”
Aid trucks headed to Gaza from occupied West Bank set ablaze
Aid trucks carrying humanitarian aid supplies for Gaza have been destroyed by fire in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Video obtained by the Reuters news agency shows trucks beside the separation wall in Beit Awwa, west of Hebron, fully engulfed in flames. Firefighters work to extinguish the fire but the vehicles and contents appear destroyed.
On Monday, Israelis blocked aid trucks in the latest incident in a series of attacks on humanitarian relief headed for the war-battered coastal enclave.
Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested at the protest at the Tarqumiyah military checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to a statement from lawyers representing them.
A convoy of aid trucks destroyed by Israeli settlers at checkpoint near Hebron
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