Thousands of Gaza residents broke into warehouses and distribution centres of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) grabbing flour and “basic survival items”, the organisation said on Sunday.
“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement.
One of the warehouses, located in Deir al-Balah, is where UNRWA stores supplies from the humanitarian convoys crossing into Gaza from Egypt.
Why wasn’t the UNRWA already giving out all these supplies? Why did they have to break in?
The condition for the convoys getting through was that Hamas wouldn’t be allowed to have any. Presumably they had a distribution system set up or were in the process of setting one up to do just that, which failed to reach enough people.
There’s always a bottleneck when distribution of anything is happening and desperate people are more likely to be unwilling or unable to wait.
So why did they break in? Every one will have their own specific reasons, but desperation is the most likely reason.
israel controls Gaza’s borders, including sea and air space, and blocks a lot of humanitarian aid.