By Iqbal Tamimi
The headlines came in some newspapers two days ago screaming ‘ The poor of Sinai are looting the aid of the poor of Gaza’...this is alarming I thought, the aid was there for a very long time, no one from AlAreesh’s poor ever touched a grain of rice before, what was happening?
It was found that at the early hours of dawn, a few boys ran towards the sport stadium in AlAreesh where tons of humanitarian aid for Gaza was piling up, they have started to loot whatever their hands could reach, and then tens of grownups followed them to take what remained of the food and other urgently needed aid for Gaza.
Is this possible I thought? Why there were no security forces to guard those tons of aid in food and other consumer goods especially that they were supposed to reach the orphans and the needy in Gaza who suffered the Israeli bombardment and the siege?
It has been reported that one of the witnesses said that ‘the poor kids were able to loot a large amount of food aid which has been lying there in the sun since last January’...But then he burst to tears.
I guess he was crying because both the ones on the Egyptian side who committed the looting and the people of Gaza on the other side who are supposed to get the aid are extremely poor. At least one of them should have benefited from the food.
Other witnesses said that there were some Egyptian police security present but the children threw some stones at them and kept them away; others said that they have phoned the police and reported that there is looting going on, but the police never responded.
One wonders, why this aid that was laying there since January has not been looted before or delivered. The answer came from the poor of AlAreesh themselves. One boy carrying a bag of rice on his shoulders in a hurry said: ‘we are not thieves, we are only poor. We came to take whatever we can benefit from because the authorities piled everything here to burn it; we are taking rice, flour, tinned food, oil, cheese, and blankets’.
The Egyptian police refused to comment on the looting, but confirmed that the tons piling there were gathered to be burned down because all of it was inedible any more; all expired and no more safe for human consumption.....WHY on Earth has such a thing been allowed to happen? Why were tons of food aid to starving people not allowed to go through to Gaza? Why feed the fire instead of feeding the people on either side? Why did the North Sinai Governor Mohamed Shousha and the Red Crescent official fail to respond to all the attempts to call them? Why burn all this effort that has been a collaborative effort of millions of people and charity donors around the world? Why has Egypt stooped so low?
It was found that the authorities in Egypt have already burned down in May more than 250 tons of food aid that came originally last January as a donation from the Libyan people, after months exposure to the heat of the sun and finding out that it was no longer edible or fit for human consumption.
Why would Egypt not facilitate the delivery of the food to the starving poor in Gaza? Through the sea...through the crossings...through the air...or even through the tunnels that were gassed by the Egyptian authorities to deter any hungry soul from reaching out for a loaf of bread.....why Egypt are you frightened of being caught red-handed while trying to feed the hungry orphans? Why Egypt? WHY????
No comments:
Post a Comment