Is there clear public evidence for Netanyahu's assertion that Hamas is stealing the food aid at gunpoint, enough to affect the civilians in Gaza?

Question

In a recent interview, Netanyahu said:

“When we started out putting in the humanitarian convoys, we said there will be one problem. And that is what if Hamas tries to steal the food and the drugs that we’re bringing for the civilian population, for its own terrorist forces?”

“I think the White House said on October 19 if that happens then the international community will have to stop the aid. It’s happened. In bundles. But nobody has asked to stop the aid, and we haven’t stopped it.”

[...]

Asked why more aid isn’t reaching Gaza by land, Netanyahu said: “Hamas is coming at gunpoint and stealing the food.

“Humanitarian deaths and starvation is, for us, it’s a tragedy. For them, it’s a strategy. They think that this will help them place more pressure on Israel to stop the war, leave them in place so they can repeat the October 7 massacre.”

There have been videos posted in the Western media with people rushing trucks and stealing aid, but I didn't see the "at gunpoint" aspect to that.

Since Israel has a lot of surveillance over Gaza, have they posted convincing evidence that this is happening on a massive scale, i.e. Hamas stealing aid at gunpoint, enough to affect the rest of the Gaza population?

I would prefer if non-Israeli media, and clear video evidence is presented. I'm aware of older Israeli-media articles like this, which claims that gunmen stole food, but it only has some segments of armed people sitting on top of trucks (as they are moving), and the purpose of those armed men has been disputed. E.g. some UN agencies and even US sources say that rather than stealing the aid, men like those were protecting it from being stolen.

After a string of Israeli attacks on members of Gaza’s Hamas-run civilian police force, officers withdrew earlier this month from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. Since they left, trucks have been attacked in the crossing’s holding area, according to U.N. humanitarian coordinator James McGoldrick. [...]

“With the departure of police escorts it has been virtually impossible for the U.N. or anyone else ... to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs,” U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield, appointed by President Biden to coordinate humanitarian aid to Gaza, said Friday.

So, is there clear evidence for Hamas stealing the aid at gunpoint? Enough to cause a humanitarian crisis? (Which also is information that Netanyahu says he doesn't have--in the same interview.)

What would I consider incontrovertible evidence? E.g. gunmen unloading an aid truck into a tunnel.

Answer 1

The latest that I have encountered is this video, posted on Ynetnews a few days ago:
Watch: Palestinian gunmen open fire on Gazan civilians before humanitarian aid arrives

IDF states Palestinian gunmen opened fire about an hour before the entry of the aid convoy into the strip

As anything in this conflict, the video can be questioned: is it authentic? What does it exactly show? Are the gunmen affiliated to Hamas? How can we know that it is indeed Hamas' policy? The answers to these questions and the evidence will finally depend on what people believe in and which side they support. So this kind of "public evidence" is probably as good as it gets here.

Even the proven assertion that Hamas does expropriate food could be questioned by those, who believe that Hamas is the rightful government of Gaza and as such should be in control of food distribution. Indeed, it is partially on these grounds that Hamas, Qatar and Iran object to food deliveries bypassing Rafah and/or not coordinated with Hamas (notably the deliveries by ships.)

Update
To support the assertions made in the last paragraph: Hamas themselves have released a video of armed men riding a humanitarian aid convoy, characterizing it as "securing humanitarian aid for the Northern Gaza":

A video uploaded to the Telegram channel of the Hamas Ministry of the Interior’s Palestinian Civil Defense force on March 18, 2024, shows the force bringing in a humanitarian aid convoy into northern Gaza. In the video, a uniformed man tells the camera that the aid is being brought into the North Gaza Governorate. Armed men in uniform can be seen riding on top of the sacks of flour on the trucks.

Driver: "We are securing the entrance of aid to the North Gaza Governorate for the second consecutive day. We stopped at the Dawla Square, thanks to Allah. The trucks will now begin to enter the North Gaza Governorate, inshallah. Thanks, guys."

Update 2
MEMRI also has a compilation of statements by Gazans critical of Hamas, including the ones like:

During a December 6, 2023 live broadcast, an elderly Palestinian woman standing outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis told a reporter for Qatar's Al-Jazeera network that Hamas operatives commandeer all the aid that is coming into the Gaza Strip and take it into their tunnels.

The plot against the residents of the Gaza Strip is not only external [i.e. from Israel], but also internal. The gas stations and the cooking gas depots are full, yet despite this, tens of thousands of suffering people have been queuing in front of the stations since the first day of the ceasefire, to no avail. The [Hamas] police are summoned to beat these people with clubs. The police take as much fuel as they want for themselves and their associates, and as much as they need for commercial purposes, [namely, in order] to sell it at five times the usual price. Then they leave, having accomplished their national mission… Anyone who thinks that I am exaggerating should go to these stations and see for themselves what is happening to the people. Oh resistance, is this what the home front [looks like]?

Beyond the naïve
In reality situation is more complex than one could conclude from the mainstream media reports aimed at laymen. Indeed, before the war Hamas was the de facto government in Gaza, providing, among other things, security for the Humanitarian aid shipments and organizing its distribution. Since now Israel does not acknowledge Hamas even as a de facto Gaza government, any attempts by Hamas to control aid shipments and distribution are considered as theft. Moreover, the Hamas police officers attempting any such actions are targeted by IDF, as a "police officer" is just an euphemism for a "Hamas fighter". According to a US diplomat:

According to Sutterfeld, Israeli forces earlier this month killed Palestinian police — among them Hamas operatives — protecting a UN aid convoy in the enclave’s southern city of Rafah. As a result, Sutterfeld said they have since refused to protect convoys, hampering aid deliveries inside Gaza because of threats from criminal gangs.
[...]
Satterfield said the police escorts include Hamas members but also officers with no direct affiliation to the terror group.

Both Hamas and Israel are trying to co-opt local clans for securing and distributing the Humanitarian aid:

Hamas has recently been attempting to seize control of the delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, out of recognition that such control is critical to maintaining its rule and its grip on the populace.1 These efforts were spurred by reports that Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are in contact with armed clans in Gaza with the aim of establishing a local Palestinian force to replace the Hamas administration, which will distribute the humanitarian aid to the civilian population. [...] At the same time, Hamas is evidently attempting to conceal its direct involvement in, and control of, the delivery of the aid, presumably in order to deceive Israeli and international elements that are likely to oppose this. It is doing so by acting through proxies, such as "the Popular Defense Committees", whose members explicitly note that they are subordinate to the Hamas interior ministry, and "Palestinian clans" which openly assert that they will cooperate with Hamas.

Note that the US favors the Palestinian authority overtaking the control of Gaza, and might be involved in the measures described in the first paragraph.

See also: Palestinian clans and factions step in to protect Gaza aid, sources say by Reuters

Obviously, any clans trying to bypass Hamas in distributing the humanitarian aid are considered by the latter as Israel's collaborators:

Hamas terrorists executed a leader in the powerful Doghmush clan in Gaza this week after claiming the group had been stealing humanitarian aid and may have been in contact with Israel.

October 16 incident
On October 16, 2023 UNRWA published a tweet, claiming that Hamas is stealing the Humanitarian aid, but later retracted it (or simply quietly deleted):
Times of Isreal: UNRWA indicates Hamas stole supplies from its Gaza premises, then walks back claim
Haaretz: UNRWA Walks Back Statement Accusing Hamas of Stealing Humanitarian Aid From Gaza Compound
Wall Street Journal: The Gaza Hospital and the Missing Aid. Hamas steals from a U.N. refugee agency, which plays along.

(Image from the link provided by the Times of Israel)

Gaza clans involvement
There is some debate about the extent of Gaza clans collaboration with Israel and/or Palestinian Authority. According to The Japan Times:

The Israelis weren’t acting at the clan’s request. Rather, all three — Hamas, clans and the Israeli military — are engaged in a bloody battle for control of north Gaza and aid distribution, making an already troubled process more dangerous and unreliable. Famine is a threat, and people are beginning to die of hunger, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

While Hamas and the media sympathetic deny that any of the clans collaborate with Israel, Hamas found it necessary to publish a statement threatening anyone who engages in such a collaboration (see also here):

Conceding to Israel’s proposition would constitute “direct collaboration with the Occupation and a national betrayal that we will not tolerate,” Hamas’s security source reportedly told Al-Majd Al-Amni.

Hamas will handle those who disrupt the internal front in the strip “with an iron fist” and will not permit the imposition of new rules, according to the source cited by the outlet.

The source said that arming families and clans is an attempt by the Occupation to offset battlefield losses, describing the move as “political games within the Gaza Strip.” They described the Occupation’s attempt to concoct entities to manage the strip as a “failed conspiracy.”

On the other hand, the Israeli media seems to be more preoccupied not with the question of whether the clans would collaborate, but rather whether the clans are reliable as a replacement for Hamas in a long term:
Times of Israel : Relying on local clans to run postwar Gaza should be off the table, experts warn
Haaretz: Israel Seeks to Let Armed Gangs Control Gaza, but Could Find Hamas Back in Charge
Ynetnews: Next to head the Strip? Gaza's most influential clans

The involvement of Palestinian Authority (unclear, whether backed up by Israel or the US) is manifested by the recent arrest by Hamas of several PA affiliated men, and by Hamas accusing PA of trying to infiltrate Gaza.

Finally, The New Humanitarian reports that Israel has been trying to step up food delivery in Gaza for a long time, but not with much success:

Israel has been working for months to create a parallel system for aid delivery in the Gaza Strip that excludes the UN and other international humanitarian organisations with a long-standing presence in the enclave, more than a dozen international and local aid workers have told The New Humanitarian.

Update 26/04/2024
According to recent PCPSR poll the Palestinians themselves do not think that the food distribution is fair, with the greatest number of complaints against the Local Palestinian Group (which refers to Hamas and possibly other groups, whereas government refers to the Palestinian authority in the West Bank):

Update 28/05/2024
In the State Department press briefing of May 20, 2024, Matthew Miller openly acknowledges that Hamas is diverting aid:

QUESTION: Can you say anything about how distribution of that aid after the settlers – the aid shipment that was attacked by settlers, how the distribution went once inside Gaza?

MR MILLER: I think you’re referring to these reports and the statement that Hamas put out about the diversion of that aid. So those aid convoys came from Jordan into Erez crossing, which was just opened – something that the President insisted on in his April 4th phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yesterday was the first major shipment of aid from Jordan over this new land route through Erez crossing. The convoys from the Jordan military that brought the aid in unloaded the aid inside Gaza. It was then picked up by a humanitarian implementer for distribution inside Gaza, and that aid was intercepted and diverted by Hamas on the ground in Gaza.

Miller is then asked whether this was the first time that Hamas diverts the aid:

QUESTION: But in terms of the number of occurrences that Hamas has diverted aid, is this – how many times would you say this has happened?

MR MILLER: There may have been minor ones in the past. I can’t speak to – this is the first major diversion of aid. And as I said, it ultimately has now been returned to the humanitarian implementer, so it will get where it needed to go. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was an unacceptable act.

Answer 2

There does not appear to be evidence to support this claim.

While it is true that looting of aid has been observed, incidents have not involved guns and have not been linked to Hamas. Take for example:

• Civilians looting warehouses in October, reported by the UN
• Looting of convoys in early February, relayed to the BBC by the UN. Note, it is suspected that some of the looters in this incident were gang members, because some looted goods began to appear on the market in Gaza instead of being freely distributed. However, there is no evidence that Hamas was involved in this incident. I will reference this article again later on.
• Civilians looting trucks in late February, reported by the WFP
• An incident with civilians at the start of March, reported by the BBC. Without debating the IDF tank, or the claims of IDF attacks, it is clear that orderly distribution of this aid quickly broke down, resulting in what could be described as looting. However, it appears that it was civilians who were taking the resources.

All of this is to say that there is evidence of aid looting in Gaza. However, it is widely believed outside of Israel and Palestine that the looting of aid is being done by gangs who are trying to make money and Palestinian civilians who are becoming desperate for aid. This is exacerbated by the decline in Palestinian police protecting aid convoys, which the police attribute to the loss of eight men during IDF raids.

Netanyahu's claim of Hamas stealing food at gunpoint is dubious. For starters, this claim has been used by the Israeli government for months. The February 12th article from the BBC which I linked above mentions that the Israeli embassy in London made the same claim back then. Even in December, a spokesman for the Israeli government said in an interview with Sky News (at 0:44):

"And we know now that Hamas is diverting and stealing aid from the people of Gaza."

He continues (0:58):

"To the extent we can be assured that Hamas is not stealing that aid, which it is."

So this is a claim which has been made multiple times by different members of the Israeli government, yet they do not provide evidence to substantiate it. If this is something which the IDF and the Israeli government have honestly been seeing for months, then these officials should be able to provide evidence for it when they make these claims. This lack of evidence has been noted by David Satterfield, an American government official who was appointed as the US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues. In a February interview with the CEIP, Satterfield stated (20:35):

"No Israeli official has come to me, come to the administration with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN in the centre or the South of Gaza. The North's a different story."

In what I believe is an explanation of the comment about North Gaza, Satterfield goes on to discuss how Hamas does have influence in groups such as the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and that this influence can shape where assistance goes. However, he reiterates in no uncertain terms that there have been no allegations of interference with UN assistance. Satterfield also explains that convoys have been attacked by civilians and criminals (see the gangs mentioned in the February BBC article).

What makes verifying the claim of theft more difficult is that outside journalists are not being permitted into Gaza. This is echoed in the February BBC article which I have referred to a few times. Information about the situation has been coming from reporters who were already in Gaza when the fighting began. Reporters in Gaza are being killed (see this CPJ report), which further limits the amount of information coming from the ground in Gaza.

To recap, Netanyahu's claim is one which has been made by the Israeli government for months, despite a lack of evidence or requests of assistance to external governments and organizations. Based on this, it is doubtful that it is true. The kernel of truth is that there has been looting. However, providers of aid and the outside world generally agree that these were caused by desperate civilians and profiteering gangs, not Hamas.

Answer 3

The general statement has been made since October, including from reputable sources. However, a few weeks ago (mid-February 2024) a US special envoy came to the conclusion that there is "no specific evidence" that Hamas is stealing aid shipments.

There are a number of isolated incidents with video evidence showing armed men stealing aid shipments, such as

• https://www.jns.org/hamas-steals-food-from-its-citizens-yet-israel-gets-blamed/
• https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/palestinian-territories/1702285314-caught-on-camera-hamas-terrorists-steal-humanitarian-aid-beat-civilians
• https://www.jns.org/idf-evidence-shows-hamas-stealing-fuel-from-gaza-hospitals/

Though the usual problems - difficult to ascertain when and where the video was made, if the armed attackers are affiliated with Hamas or not, etc. (some reports speak of "gangs").

So, at this time, I think the most we can say is: Yes, some aid shipments apparently are stolen. We can not say for certain that Hamas is doing it, or that it is happening on a large scale.

Answer 4

The FDD's brief I linked to in the other answer links to this article (Israeli news website in English) that has one such surveillance video.

Non-Israeli sites would be relying on the Israeli reports, so why not prefer the source? It's not like the Jordanians are flying their own drones there.

As to whether it's enough to cause a crisis? Who knows. The same FDD brief talks about Hamas not allowing cooperation with Israel on distribution, so the aid may be flowing, but not effectively distributed because no-one is willing to work with the IDF on the coordination. The Israelis, from their side, don't want to work with Hamas/UNRWA, for obvious reasons.

This quote is interesting:

“With the departure of police escorts it has been virtually impossible for the U.N. or anyone else ... to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs,”

Who are these "criminal gangs"? Where did they get their weapons? It's easy to dismiss this as "some random guys with guns", but what makes you think they're not the Hamas militants? What would "criminal gangs" be doing with this aid in Gaza?

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Side comment:

What would I consider incontrovertible evidence? E.g. gunmen unloading an aid truck into a tunnel.

That's not how it works. Most Hamas operatives would appear to you just as any other civilian. Most tunnel entrances won't be in the middle of the street, they'd be inside houses and buildings. So you'll see a perfectly legit civilian taking food to a perfectly legit storage room, but if you look closely - the food then would never be leaving that room ever again.

That's not something that you can post as a short video clip, it's days of surveillance.