Gaza food aid ship delayed as Ramadan begins with no cease-fire

GAZA — A Hamas-linked website is warning Palestinians against cooperating with Israel to provide security for aid convoys and if they do, they’ll be treated as collaborators.

The warning came on the Hamas Al-Majd security website, quoting a security official in Palestinian militant forces. It came in response to Israeli media reports that Israel was considering arming some Palestinian individuals or clans in Gaza to provide security protection for aid convoys.

The convoys would be part of wider planning for humanitarian supplies after the fighting ends.

The Israeli prime minister’s office has declined to comment on the report, which came a week after dozens of Palestinians were killed in an incident in which crowds surrounded a convoy of aid trucks entering northern Gaza and troops opened fire.

“The occupation’s attempt to communicate with the leaders and clans of some families to operate within the Gaza Strip is considered direct collaboration with the occupation and is a betrayal of the nation that we will not tolerate,” the website said, quoting the official. “The occupation’s (Israel) efforts to establish bodies to manage Gaza are a ‘failed conspiracy’ that will not materialize.”

With civil order increasingly strained in Hamas-run Gaza and police refusing to provide security to convoys because of the risk of being targeted by Israeli forces, the issue of secure distribution of desperately needed food and other supplies has become a major problem.

At least 162 staff members with the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency have been killed since the start of the war, the agency said in its situation update today.

More than 400 internally displaced civilians have also been killed at UNRWA facilities that have been hit directly or indirectly, the agency said.

An estimated 1.7 million of the roughly 2.2 million civilians inside the Gaza Strip are sheltering in or near UNRWA facilities.

British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, accepting the Academy Award for best international feature yesterday, denounced the bloodshed in the Middle East and asked the audience to consider how it could “resist” the “dehumanization” of the war in Gaza.

Glazer received the Oscar for “The Zone of Interest,” a drama that follows Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss and his family as they attempt to build an idyllic life right outside the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust.

The film, a co-production of the United Kingdom and Poland, pointedly avoids showing the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime inside Auschwitz, instead focusing on the day-to-day domestic routines of the Höss family.

“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, ‘Look what we did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” Glazer said, reading from prepared remarks. “It shaped all of our past and present.”

Glazer, who is Jewish, then said: “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many people.”

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Hundreds of Palestinian Muslims have gone to Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray as Ramadan begins even though Israeli forces have enforced restrictions on the area.

The start of Ramadan was officially declared for many Muslims yesterday evening after the crescent moon was spotted in the night sky, making today the first day of fasting. Palestinians within Israel’s borders went to the mosque last night to perform their Tarawih prayers, a special prayer done only during the month of Ramadan, but many were met with Israeli forces blocking their way.

Video circulated on social media of a large crowd being blocked from accessing a gate leading to the mosque and at least one officer was seen hitting people with a baton as the group was being pushed back. NBC News verified the videos using geolocation and has reached out to Israeli police for comment.