The Goods Stopped and the Gunships Were Cleared

Israel says commercial trucks into Gaza have halted. Gaza's hauliers say Israel decided that. In the same days Washington cleared about a billion dollars of Apache helicopters for Israel.

About 2.1 million people live in Gaza, and a large share of what they eat and wear still comes through gates they do not control. On Wednesday 15 October, Israel's military liaison, the body known as COGAT, said commercial goods had not entered for two days. It blamed a dispute between merchants and Hamas. The version COGAT gave the director of the Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, was a letter about threats and coercion. The public version added a number: a fee of 10,000 shekels, about 3,220 dollars, on each truck, and a demand that 30 percent of sales inside Gaza be in cash. COGAT said merchants themselves had stopped coordinating. Nahed Sheheiber, who heads the private truckers' union in Gaza, said not one commercial truck from Israel entered on the Thursday, that aid trucks did enter, and that commercial trucks from Egypt were still coming through an Israeli-controlled crossing. He called the tax story a pretext. Palestinian importers said the decision was Israel's. Fruit and winter clothes are among the goods that stopped. Winter does not take a side in a tax dispute.

The promise was six hundred trucks

The American-brokered deal requires at least 600 trucks of humanitarian aid a day. Diplomats who watch the gate say the real flow is usually far lower. COGAT's own account of the commercial halt is that total trucks, aid plus commerce, would fall to about 300, which it calls half. Sheheiber's count has been in that neighbourhood for weeks, with about two thirds of it commercial rather than donated. Israel says it owes 600 aid trucks and that commerce is extra. The hauliers say commerce is how families buy what a ration does not include. A hunger warning issued in July said more than two thirds of the people in Gaza could be in acute hunger by the end of the year. A two-day stop can be brief. A stop explained by two incompatible stories, with no published truck log either side will sign, becomes a condition. Mladenov condemned the suspension. Condemnation does not unload a lorry.

A helicopter deal and a closed gate are the same week. One is a contract. The other is a kitchen.

In the same days, American officials signed off on twelve Apache attack helicopters for Israel, at a cost of about a billion dollars. The Apache is a gunship for supporting troops on the ground, not a weapon you buy if you believe the war in front of you is over. Palestinian health officials said Israeli strikes on Thursday killed four people and left nine in hospital. A ceasefire that still includes airstrikes, a gate that still closes, and a fresh squadron on order is a ceasefire in the legal sense and a war in the practical sense. Washington can say the helicopters are a long-lead purchase, years from delivery, and that may be true of the airframes. The political delivery is immediate. It tells the people at the gate which capital is arming the side that holds the key.

What the families can check

The families cannot check a shekel fee inside a ministry. They can check the market. If fruit and coats are gone for more than a few days, the pretext and the principle will taste the same. The Board of Peace was supposed to turn a paper truce into administration, including a place for an outside stabilising force. Equipment for that project has also been held up. A force that cannot get its tools in is a force on a letterhead. The useful demand is dull and it is the only one that feeds anyone. Publish the daily truck count, aid and commerce, by crossing, and the reason any category is at zero. Let the hauliers sign it or dispute it in public. And stop pretending a billion-dollar gunship is a separate news item from the gate. They are how this war is being chosen, one signature in an office and one queue in front of a fence.

Winter does not care which story is true

Fruit and coats are either on the market or they are not. A fee of ten thousand shekels and a demand for cash sales may be real, and still be the wrong lever to pull against two million people. A pretext may be the whole story, and the effect is identical. Health officials counted four dead and nine hurt in strikes on Thursday, which is a separate wound in the same week as a billion-dollar gunship signature. The Board of Peace cannot administer a place it cannot supply. A daily public count of trucks, signed or disputed by the hauliers, is the least bureaucratic answer available. Until that page exists, every statement from either side is a claim about a gate the families cannot see.

A gate that closes for commerce and a contract that opens for gunships tell the same story about whose week this was.