Brian McDonald
Right-wing Israeli protesters blocked trucks carrying food supplies heading to Gaza on Monday, in the latest disruption to humanitarian aid for the war-torn Palestinian territory. The trucks were attacked by an Israeli group called “Tsav 9” at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, a border crossing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in Israel, west of the city of Hebron.
Sapir Sluzker Amran, an Israeli peace activist who opposed the protesters and witnessed the incident, told CBS News on Tuesday that the group who stopped the trucks and then threw the food on the ground were mainly settlers and Israeli extremists.
Sapir Sluzker Amran, co-founder of the Breaking Walls movement
“The majority were settlers. They also live there, they are settlers in the settlements in the region,” she said. “The common theme among them all is that they belong to right-wing Zionist groups. The religious nationalist current, as we call it.”
Videos and photos taken by Amran and shared with CBS News show protesters climbing onto an aid truck and throwing food packages onto the side of the road. Other images show protesters dumping flour from large bags onto vehicles.
US considers attacks on humanitarian aid “a total outrage”
At the White House press conference on Monday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan criticized the attack.
“It is a total outrage that there are people attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan and going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance,” he said. “We are looking at the tools we have to respond to this and we are also raising our concerns at the highest level of the Israeli government. It’s something we make no bones about – we consider it completely and utterly unacceptable.”
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron also condemned the attack in a social media post and demanded that Israel hold all “attackers accountable and do more to allow aid in”, adding that he would express his concerns to the Israeli government about the incident.
Who was behind the attack on the aid convoy?
Tsav 9 is described by the Times of Israel as “a right-wing organization that opposes sending aid to Gaza while hostages are still held there.”
The group shared images and videos of the attack on the aid convoy on Monday on its X account — which features a line in Hebrew declaring its mission to halt aid to Gaza until all Israeli hostages in the Palestinian territory are freed.
“No help arrives – until the last of those kidnapped returns,” says the group’s X account.
Sapir Sluzker Amran, co-founder of the Breaking Walls movement
“They started a few months ago, they raise a lot of money and they have a lot of supporters in the government,” Amran told CBS News, claiming that extremists are often informed about humanitarian aid convoys by the Israeli military and police.
“They know, so they have advance information about when the trucks arrive, and they post it on social media and post it in their groups, WhatsApp groups, and ask people to come together and block or damage the aid,” she said.
Amran said a member of the group slapped her on Monday as she tried to stop the attack on aid trucks. She said the Israel Defense Forces personnel present at the scene did little to help her.
“I was attacked by one of the settlers there in front of an IDF soldier who was sitting, very close to us – maybe, I don’t know, less than a meter, and I saw that he slapped me really hard,” she said. “They [the IDF] I just protected him and kind of took him to one side.”
Israel’s police force said Monday’s attack on the aid convoy was under investigation and that “multiple suspects” had been detained.
COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for policy in the Palestinian territories, did not immediately respond to a CBS News request for comment on the incident in the West Bank.
Rights group says 8 Israeli strikes hit aid workers or locals
The attack highlighted the risks of humanitarian aid work for the Palestinians as the war between Israel and Hamas intensifies in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the US-based Human Rights Watch released a report accusing the IDF of at least eight attacks on aid convoys and facilities in Gaza since the war was triggered by the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. against Israel.
“Israeli authorities did not issue advance warning to any of the humanitarian organizations before the attacks, which killed or injured at least 31 aid workers and those accompanying them,” the group said in a press release.
UN worker killed in Rafah
Meanwhile, the United Nations said on Monday that one of its security personnel was killed in an incident in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Monday.
“The Secretary-General was deeply saddened to learn of the death of a United Nations Department of Safety and Security (DSS) employee and the injury of another DSS employee when their UN vehicle was struck while they were traveling to the European Hospital in Rafah,” a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement on Monday.
The UN did not specify what was believed to have hit the vehicle, but the IDF said in a statement sent to CBS News that the incident was under review.
“A report was received from the UNDSS organization that two of the organization’s workers were injured today in the Rafah area. An initial investigation carried out indicates that the vehicle was hit in an area declared an active combat zone,” the Israeli military said, adding that “he was not informed of the vehicle’s route”.
