Israel admits to arming militias in Gaza accused of stealing humanitarian aid: 'What's wrong with that?'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Thursday that his government armed armed clans in the Gaza Strip fighting Hamas, after an opposition figure and former minister accused him of doing so.

Revealing this information only benefits Hamas.

" We mobilized clans in Gaza that rival Hamas. What's wrong with that? " Netanyahu said in a video posted on his X account. "It's just good. It saves soldiers' lives."

The president's statement comes hours after opposition leader and former minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed in an interview on Israeli public radio Kan that the government is providing weapons to other militias in Gaza.

In his video, Netanyahu defended the strategy as a measure supported by security officials and accused Lieberman of jeopardizing the operation by making it public. “Revealing this information only benefits Hamas,” he said.

According to some NGOs and media outlets, these groups are allegedly stealing humanitarian aid and food , causing further chaos in the enclave.

Lieberman, who served as defense minister from 2016 to 2018 when Netanyahu was also prime minister, claimed that Israel is supplying weapons to "criminals" who identify with the Islamic State. According to him, this policy was not approved by the Cabinet, but was carried out with the knowledge of the head of the Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence agency.

On Tuesday, a new Gazan armed group calling itself "Popular Forces" urged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to move to east Rafah, an area off-limits to the Israeli army, to receive food, medicine, and shelter, according to its Facebook account.

The group's leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, has been accused by Hamas, NGOs, and international media of looting trucks carrying humanitarian aid, while Israeli forces allegedly watched without intervening.

The Israeli military reported that a total of 92 trucks carrying humanitarian aid arrived Thursday in Gaza through the Israeli Kerem Shalom crossing. They are to be unloaded and reloaded, receive Israeli approval, and then attempt to deliver their supplies to warehouses and bakeries throughout the war-torn enclave.

Meanwhile, the Israeli- and US-backed GHF organization announced Thursday that it had resumed distributing food aid in the enclave, having suspended it following the death of 30 people during a distribution on Tuesday.

After being inspected, "92 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid, including flour and food, were transferred today (Thursday) through the Kerem Shalom crossing into the Gaza Strip," detailed a statement today from COGAT, the arm of the Army that administers civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Within Gaza, any movement to or from the crossing requires passing through militarized zones where shelling continues.

According to data provided by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in these two weeks, some 940 trucks reached Israeli warehouses at the crossing, where "after being scanned, unloaded, reloaded, and moved, just over 620 trucks crossed to the Palestinian side."

From the cargo scanned at Kerem Shalom, teams in Gaza were able to collect supplies—including flour, medical supplies, and nutritional items—equivalent to approximately 370 truckloads and deliver them to Gazans in need.

" Within Gaza, any movement to or from the crossing requires passing through militarized zones where shelling continues. Teams must be flexible to avoid areas likely to be looted, but so far they can only follow routes approved by the Israeli authorities," OCHA spokesperson Olga Cherevko told EFE.

Before the war, on average, more than 500 trucks entered Gaza every day, all of whose access points are under Israeli control.

After 80 days of a complete Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid and other supplies, the population of Gaza is suffering from famine, leading the UN and other humanitarian groups to demand the urgent opening of all crossings and unhindered access for humanitarian organizations to deliver large-scale aid.