Fruit, meat and winter clothing are the things that have stopped. These are the goods Gaza’s merchants bring in, while the aid agencies bring flour. Since the middle of this week no commercial cargo has come across from Israel, and two authorities are each explaining, in their own official language, that the fault lies with somebody else.
COGAT, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, is the Israeli military body that, in its own description, “oversees humanitarian affairs” in Gaza. On Wednesday, 14 October, it announced the halt. By the next day, as Al Jazeera reported drawing on AP and Reuters, Israeli authorities were saying that no commercial goods had entered the territory for two days.
The Israeli version
According to COGAT, the decision was not Israel’s. It says Gaza’s traders stopped coordinating their shipments with the Israeli agency because Hamas was charging a fee of 10,000 shekels, about $3,220, on every truck that entered, and was demanding that 30 percent of all sales be made in cash. COGAT presents itself here as a bystander to a quarrel between merchants and the movement that still runs Gaza’s government offices.
The bystander also counts the trucks. COGAT said the traders’ decision would cut the total number of lorries entering Gaza, aid and commercial together, by half, to around 300 a day, The National reported.
The version from Gaza
On Thursday, Gaza’s government media office replied. It condemned what it called a “blatant disinformation campaign and false statement,” and said the claims were an attempt “to hold the government apparatus in Gaza responsible for the disruption of truck entry.” It did not deny that the 10,000 shekels existed. It said the money was a contribution to a “voluntary community initiative” for people in need, widows and orphans among them. It said cash was encouraged because of an “acute shortage of cash liquidity,” which made it an “absolute necessity,” but that cash payment had never been mandatory.
So one side calls it a tax and the other calls it charity. A merchant who must pay before his truck may enter could be forgiven for not seeing much difference. Neither account, as each side tells it, explains why the shelves are going empty.
The men who drive the trucks tell a third story. Nahed Sheheiber, head of Gaza’s private truckers’ union (The National, quoting him from Reuters, spells the name Shhaibar), rejected Israel’s account outright. “The merchants are not the ones who stopped the shipments,” he said. “The Israeli coordinator is claiming that Gaza’s merchants are responsible, but the truth is that the Israelis are the ones who imposed the restrictions.” His union met Gaza’s Ministry of Economy to raise its concerns, and argued that Israel was using the ministry’s fees as a pretext to shut out commercial goods.
He also described what did and did not pass on Thursday. Not one truck carrying commercial products from Israel entered. Humanitarian aid trucks did enter, and so did commercial goods from Egypt, through a crossing Israel controls.
Arithmetic of a ceasefire
Under the US-mediated ceasefire, which began in October of last year, Israel is required to let at least 600 aid trucks into Gaza each day. Diplomats say the real number has been far lower. Sheheiber put it at about 300 a day before the halt, two-thirds of them carrying commercial goods. The two counts do not match. COGAT’s figures suggest the halt would bring the flow down to 300. The truckers’ figures suggest it was already around 300, and that the commercial share, roughly 200 trucks a day by that estimate, is the part that has now stopped.
For the roughly 2.1 million people who depend entirely on these crossings, the difference between the two counts is not a technical one. The territory is still suffering from famine. In July a global hunger monitor warned that more than two-thirds of Gazans could face acute hunger by the end of the year. Most people live in makeshift shelters, and winter is coming.
Humanitarian workers fear that prices will rise. Aid alone cannot hold them down, they say. The market has to work too. Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, put it this way:
“The humanitarian sector on its own cannot meet the needs of all the people. The markets need to be functioning.”
Those who wait
Above both sides sits the Board of Peace, the US-led body meant to oversee Gaza’s transition, which has already told the UN refugee agency to keep out. Its high representative, Nickolay Mladenov, said the dispute showed that the process had to move forward. It has stalled because Israel insists that Hamas disarm first. “Civilian supplies, humanitarian assistance and commercial activity must be protected from coercion, exploitation and interference,” he said, and he called for the quick deployment of the NCAG, a committee of Palestinian technocrats formed in January, with the support of the International Stabilisation Force. The committee has not yet been allowed into Gaza. The force has no base there either: Israel is reportedly blocking a US firm from breaking ground on one.
A pattern runs through this, offered here as reflection and not as reporting. Power over a besieged place is often exercised through things that look like paperwork: a coordination form that goes unfiled, a fee described as a donation, a quota that is met on paper and not at the gate. Each authority keeps a ledger that proves it is innocent, and the cost lands on people who keep no ledger at all. The same pattern appears along the ceasefire line that was supposed to move east and has instead moved west.
COGAT says the merchants can reverse the halt. Gaza’s officials say Israel can. Meanwhile the fruit and the winter coats are on the other side of the crossing, waiting for someone to sign.