LONDON: Far-right Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks bound for the Gaza Strip at the Kerem Abu Salem crossing on Thursday, according to media reports, as severe food shortages and cuts to humanitarian assistance deepened the enclave’s crisis.
Members of the Tsav 9 movement demanded a halt to aid deliveries and the dismantling of Hamas. Yulia Malinovsky, a Knesset member from the Yisrael Beiteinu party, joined the blockade, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Malinovsky posted a video of herself at the protest on X, saying she had helped stop the trucks at the crossing, also known as Kerem Shalom.
“This morning, I blocked ‘aid’ trucks that the Netanyahu government is transferring to Hamas,” she wrote in Hebrew.
She also used the post to campaign for Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, a political opponent of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In the upcoming elections, it’s either a decisive victory or stagnation; either right or Palestine; either Lieberman or the prime minister of October 7,” she wrote, referring to Netanyahu.
Another participant, Sigal Kraunik of Amkha Yisrael, called the shipments a “national disgrace,” according to Haaretz.
The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Oct. 16 that a halt in commercial supplies threatened fragile gains in children’s nutrition and recovery.
Israel said Wednesday that commercial goods were no longer entering Gaza because of what it described as a tax dispute between local merchants and Hamas.
Meanwhile, aid agencies have warned that funding shortages are forcing them to scale back assistance despite continuing need.
Carl Skau, the World Food Program’s acting executive director, said on Oct. 18 that funding constraints had forced the agency to reduce the number of people receiving assistance in Gaza from 1.8 million to about 500,000. The cuts reflected a lack of money, not a decline in need, as winter approached, he said.
Intermittent closures of crossings by Israeli forces throughout October have further restricted deliveries of food, fuel and humanitarian aid. The Rafah crossing also remains closed to evacuations of sick and wounded Palestinians.
Tsav 9, also known as Order 9, has a history of obstructing aid deliveries. The US imposed sanctions on the group in June 2024, accusing it of blocking, harassing and damaging convoys carrying humanitarian supplies to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The State Department said members had spent months obstructing aid shipments traveling from Jordan to Gaza, including through the occupied West Bank. They blocked roads, sometimes violently, damaged trucks and dumped supplies onto the road, according to the department.
On May 13, 2024, members of the group looted and set fire to two aid trucks near the West Bank city of Hebron, the department said.