Media report on Hamas rejection of convoy aid
4 June 2010
One of the minor themes emerging from the British media’s reporting on Monday’s flotilla raid off Gaza is what’s being done with the confiscated aid parcels.
According to broadsheets reporting on the estimated 8,000 tons of materials the Turkish-sponsored convoy had intended to deliver to Gaza, the Hamas regime there has refused to accept Israeli trucks carrying them. Hamas say they will deal only with the convoy passengers themselves and not admit a single parcel of aid until all of those detained by Israel have been released.
Damien McElroy, Justin Vela, Dina Kraft and Richard Spencer write in ‘We have nothing to be sorry for, Israel tells Turkey,’ in today’s The Daily Telegraph, ‘According to officials in Gaza, Hamas has refused to allow the aid offloaded from the flotilla to enter the territory until all detained activists are released.’ Harriet Sherwood, in a short sidebar article in The Guardian today, ‘Where did the aid go?’, likewise reports: ‘Israel agreed to deliver the aid after the flotilla attack ended in the deaths of nine pro-Palestinian activists.’
And Donald Macintyre, in an Independent interview with Middle East envoy Tony Blair, ‘Blair urges Israel to ease Gaza blockade’, states: ‘Hamas has turned away from Gaza a consignment of aid – including wheelchairs – transferred from the commandeered flotilla, partly on the grounds that it was incomplete, with Israel excluding construction materials like cement and piping from the original cargo.’
Most references to Hamas’s refusal to accept the aid are asides mentioned in the context of other stories. However, Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 reported from Gaza last night, specifically on the issue of what has happened to the aid. Citing the same background - Israel’s offer to import goods, Hamas’s rejection of it - Hilsum goes on to say that the situation is actually more complicated than a mere offer and refusal and cites at length ’a UN aid worker’ who says it is Israel who makes the movement of aid into Gaza an especially arduous process. Though that aid worker didn’t address the flotilla case in particular, Channel 4’s report raised the interesting question of the protocol of inspection and delivery that the ‘Free Gaza’ packages have been subjected to.
Just Journalism spoke via telephone this morning with Aliza Landes, a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces, who said: ‘The bottom line is: We had our trucks there, they were ready to go into Gaza. We'd unloaded thirty trucks at this point and Hamas refused to let us enter.’