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Amid theidfunrwaunidfunidfunidfidfidfidfidfidfYour browser does not support the element. catastrophic destruction of Gaza, new buildings are rising. Not shelters for Palestinians left homeless by the war, or hospitals for the sick and injured, but bigger outposts for the Israel Defence Forces () along the new roads it has paved in key spots, bisecting the coastal strip and cutting it off from Egypt.On November 12th the army opened another new road, at the Kissufim crossing on the border with Israel. For the moment this one is not meant for Israeli troops but to let aid into central and southern Gaza. Israel is eager to rebuff accusations that it is starving Gaza’s people. But on the first day the crossing was operating an aid lorry was stolen after entering the strip. The next day 14 out of 20 lorries trying to get in were stolen, some by Palestinian gunmen who shot and wounded the drivers.One of the few things Israel and aid groups agree on is that Gaza’s growing chaos makes it ever harder to distribute aid to the 2.2m people there, most of them displaced by the war. Little is getting in. Nearly a third of the lorries entering Gaza are hijacked, reckons an Israeli officer. On November 18th, only 11 lorries in a convoy of 109 trucks made it into southern Gaza, says , the ’s agency for Palestinians.Some looters run their own fiefs. Some are stronger than Hamas which, despite being battered by Israel, still controls parts of Gaza. One Israeli general admitted that units do not always try to stop looters because commanders are loth to risk their soldiers’ lives in the crossfire.The situation in northern Gaza is dire. The says that virtually no aid has reached parts of the area for 40 days, repeating its warnings that famine is imminent. Fishermen heading out to sea have been shot by Israeli troops. Prices of basics have soared. Onions cost 400 times as much as they did before the war, eggs 16 times and sugar over 25 times. Few people have cash to pay for food anyway: banks no longer function.Israel has no clear plan for delivering aid to Gaza. Currently the lorries are brought in by international aid organisations or paid for by foreign governments. But once through Israeli checkpoints the convoys may come under fire from looters, the and Hamas.Israel and the international groups blame each other. Israeli officials claim that they co-ordinate with them but say they are inefficient at dishing out the aid. agencies say Israel rejected 27 of 31 aid missions to northern Gaza between November 1st and 18th. In a recent deposition to Israel’s Supreme Court, the admitted that it does not have enough forces on the ground, so “doesn’t effectively control Gaza Strip” and therefore Hamas retains some “governmental authority”.Israel’s security establishment wants to set up an alternative Palestinian force, aligned with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to replace Hamas and take over running the strip. But Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is against this. Rather than present a day-after strategy for Gaza, he sacked its main proponent, the then defence minister, Yoav Gallant. After he was fired Mr Gallant privately told relatives of Israeli hostages still in Gaza that there was no longer a security reason for the to remain there.Mr Netanyahu is under pressure from his far-right allies to reject a ceasefire. They make no secret of their desire to build settlements in Gaza. They want the to control civilian affairs there as a prelude to permanent occupation. The generals oppose this. Mr Netanyahu has wavered, suggesting private security contractors (a polite word for mercenaries) should protect aid convoys. Senior officers say this would be expensive and ineffective.Concern is growing that the far right will exploit this lack of strategy to secure Israeli control of Gaza. Air strikes continue, but since October 5th the only major operation in Gaza has been in Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City, where many of Hamas’s remaining fighters are concentrated. The says it killed 1,200 of them. Palestinians and aid groups say many of the casualties were civilians.“Our mission in Jabaliya is to move the civilians out of the area so we can ensure that no terrorists or terror infrastructure remains,” says an officer involved in the operation. The generals insist that Palestinian civilians will be permitted to return to the north. But they will not say when. None has been allowed back so far. And the generals’ political masters may have other ideas. Israeli lawyers, including some who have advised the government on international humanitarian law, have warned that the current operations “raise a heavy concern of war crimes of forced deportation”.With northern Gaza almost empty of civilians and most of its buildings destroyed, it looks ever likelier that Israel will insist on maintaining control to pave the way there for new Jewish settlements.
