'Lawlessness' reigns in Gaza: 'No clear sovereign power' paves way for lack of law and order
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00:00Hezbollah says it's fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel, this in retaliation
00:05for a deadly strike in south Lebanon.
00:09Tensions have been spiking.
00:11Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatching two of his top advisers to Washington.
00:17They'll be meeting with National Security Council Chief Jake Sullivan and U.S. Secretary
00:22of State Antony Blinken later this Thursday.
00:27Simmering cross-border tensions between Israel and Lebanon and fears it could be reaching
00:35a boiling point.
00:36The Israeli army approved plans on Tuesday to launch a military operation in Lebanon
00:41after months of deadly rocket attacks and airstrikes between Israel and the militant
00:46group Hezbollah.
00:47The Iran-backed group sent a warning that Lebanon would be ready to fight a regional
00:51war even though it does not want the war to expand.
00:56Israel knows that no place will be safe from our missiles and our drones and our strikes
01:01are not indiscriminate.
01:05Israel knows that we have a list of targets and we have the ability to reach these targets
01:10and we will shake the foundations of Israel.
01:13For the first time, Nasrallah also threatened to strike Cyprus, an EU country which has
01:19hosted Israeli forces for training drills.
01:23Cyprus should be warned that opening Cypriot bases and airports to the Israelis to target
01:30Lebanon means that the Cypriot government has become part of the war.
01:38This comes one day after a U.S. envoy met Lebanese and Israeli officials in a desperate
01:43attempt to stop a full-scale conflict, but drone footage released by Hezbollah Tuesday
01:49showing potential strike targets in northern Israel prompted the foreign minister to say
01:54in an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon severely beaten.
02:00Since the October 7th attacks by Hamas in Israel, cross-border fighting between Hezbollah
02:05and the Israeli army has been ongoing, killing at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians on the
02:11Israeli side and over 400 people on the Lebanese side, most of whom were Hezbollah fighters.
02:19Now, taking a look at Gaza, amid the dangers of delivering food aid, there are the hazards
02:26of smugglers, and in particular, cigarette smugglers.
02:33This is Wall Street Journal reporter Dov Lieber, who filed a story along with his colleagues
02:40about the situation going in from the Kerem Shalem crossing amid the moves by the Israelis
02:49to have these daily tactical pauses to bring in aid.
02:52There are the logistical questions, and yeah, there's dealing with those smugglers.
02:56Dov Lieber, who now joins us from Jerusalem.
03:00Thank you for being with us here on France 24.
03:02Thank you for having me.
03:04Hi.
03:05You write in this story, you quote a Palestinian man near the central Gaza city of Han Yunus
03:13as saying he saw armed men on aid trucks open three bags of flour that had fallen out of
03:21the trucks to check them carefully.
03:23What were they looking for?
03:25Well, they were looking for cigarettes.
03:29Cigarettes have become extremely valuable in Gaza.
03:33Obviously, they're an addictive habit for many people.
03:36But ever since Israel took control of the Rafah crossing last month, they've had trouble
03:43getting cigarettes into the enclave.
03:45That means there's very few left.
03:47And now the price of a single cigarette has skyrocketed to $25.
03:53So, you know, there are smugglers who are trying to get more cigarettes into Gaza.
03:59And so each one of those packages-
04:01So wait, hang on a sec.
04:03Why is it that getting cigarettes through the Rafah boarding crossing with Egypt is
04:08easier than getting it through from Israel?
04:12Well, because Israel just has better control over its own crossing.
04:18They had some kind of system that it was easier to get it through Rafah.
04:23But either way, why the price is skyrocketing has to do with the fact that there's less
04:31in the enclave.
04:32And that happened since last month after Israel took control of the Rafah crossing.
04:36So the skyrocketing price of cigarettes are connected to that in some way.
04:42And just how high are the prices?
04:45So, like I said, they're $25 for each cigarette today.
04:50So a pack is worth a lot of money.
04:52A whole pack is worth even more.
04:54And this is the type of contraband that smugglers are trying to get into Gaza through aid convoys.
05:00And that's what's causing those aid convoys to be attacked because now it's not clear
05:05if the people on the other side in Gaza know where the cigarettes are stashed.
05:09They may not always know, which means that they're going after many different types of
05:14aid convoys.
05:15And that makes it very dangerous for them to go to the border with Israel where the
05:20aid is being transferred to Gaza, picking up that aid.
05:24And as they go back into Gaza, they're getting attacked.
05:27So researching for this story, Dov, have you been able to get a sense, I know this isn't
05:32an exact science, but who's in charge in Gaza?
05:35Do the smugglers control the militant groups?
05:38Do the militant groups control the smugglers?
05:40Or do they each work in a parallel universe?
05:44It's a very good question.
05:46I'd like to answer that question, but a lot of it would be based on speculation.
05:50We don't have clear evidence as to who's running the smuggling on each side.
05:56I mean, we know the cigarettes are coming from Egypt.
05:59So we assume Egyptians are involved in some way.
06:03When you say the Egyptians, who do you mean?
06:06We don't mean the Egyptian government or anything like that.
06:08We mean maybe criminal elements on the other side who are working with criminal elements
06:14inside of Gaza.
06:15That's the best understanding that we have so far.
06:19So they're the ones profiting.
06:22Who else is profiting?
06:23Do we know the answer to that question?
06:26We don't know the answer.
06:27We just know, we don't know.
06:31We don't know the answer.
06:33And what we've seen, I mean, this war is now in its ninth month, that there have been,
06:41there's been a desperate situation when it comes to humanitarian aid.
06:44And there's also been a lot of looting.
06:49The Financial Times reporting this week that armed gangs have plundered at least $120 million
06:55in the past two months from banks in the Gaza Strip.
06:59Why now the spike in plundering banks?
07:03Well, it all has to do with the growing lack of law and order.
07:10And that's also connected, by the way, to the whole cigarette situation.
07:13I mean, the cigarettes are just the latest and most potent manifestation of prior looting.
07:21I mean, this isn't, this isn't the first looting we're seeing in Gaza.
07:25Before it may have been for food or for diapers or stuff like that.
07:29But the more time that there's no clear sovereign power inside Gaza, the stronger the lack of
07:39law and order becomes, and the more this lawlessness grows, and the more these criminal
07:44elements can operate inside Gaza and take advantage of the situation.
07:48After working on this story, how do you understand Israel's announcement of tactical pauses?
07:56Well, that has to do with the fact that, and this is according to speaking to both the
08:05Israelis and the United Nations and the aid groups, is that, you know, the aid groups
08:10have been telling Israel, look, it's not safe for us to go pick up the aid.
08:14It's a problem.
08:15You know, there's over 1,200 trucks worth of aid just sitting on the border with Israel.
08:19No one's picking it up, even though there's a, you know, there's this food scarcity.
08:22It's a huge problem in Gaza.
08:24But they can't get to the aid because they say it's dangerous.
08:26So what Israel said is, we'll make a safe route.
08:29We won't fight along this tactical route that goes from the border of Israel through
08:34southern Gaza into this north axis road where they can reach much of the rest of the enclave.
08:39So this is why Israel has announced these daily pauses during the daylight hours to
08:44try to facilitate, to help these aid groups get to the border safely.
08:49But what we heard from the aid groups is that, you know, this problem of the looting is,
08:56the safe route doesn't necessarily solve that.
08:59That has to do with the regular hostilities between Israel and Hamas.
09:03But the general lack of law and order is a whole nother problem.
09:07Yeah, because this aid route goes from what?
09:09The southeast corner of the Gaza Strip, partially north, but not really.
09:17It makes it as far as central Gaza, roughly.
09:20Well, they make it to this road that basically bisects the entire strip.
09:25So, you know, they're basically trying to facilitate the trucks from getting to the
09:30Israel border to the area where they can then, you know, reach most of the rest of the enclave.
09:37And what you're saying begs the question of, at this point in time, who is in charge of
09:45securing the food aid routes and the food distribution?
09:49That has been a major, one of the most important points of contention now for many months inside Gaza.
09:57The problem is, Israel does not want to be responsible for guarding the aid or distributing the aid.
10:04I mean, this is a potentially combustible situation.
10:07It puts Israeli soldiers in danger.
10:10And I should note, in other conflict zones, usually it's private contractors who are in
10:15charge of security.
10:16And that's what, by the way, the aid groups say they're willing to do to get private contractors.
10:21But they say, you know, they need a little help from the Israelis here.
10:26I should note, by the way, that commercial trucks going into Gaza have now far outpaced
10:36the aid.
10:37So commercial enterprise, people who are willing to take a higher risk to make a profit on
10:43what they're bringing into Gaza, they're moving more things from Israel into Gaza.
10:47But that's because they have a higher tolerance risk.
10:50But this, just basically controversy over who should be in charge of making sure there's
10:55law and order in Gaza, who should be in charge of guarding these aid convoys.
10:59I mean, it's a bone of contention.
11:02And it's one that has been, I think, just, there's no clear answer.
11:08And I know the Israelis are trying to help bring in private contractors.
11:14I know that the aid groups are trying their own things.
11:18But, you know, the situation there is just extremely difficult.
11:22And the lack of any kind of sovereign power there, any kind of police network, I just
11:29think makes things very difficult.
11:31So, Yair, when you sort of list the priorities right now, you have trying somehow to revive
11:39truce talks.
11:40You have the tensions at Israel's border with Lebanon and what we've been talking about,
11:45which is feeding the people of Gaza.
11:48What would fly on the wall in those talks in Washington between top Israeli and U.S.
11:53officials probably tell us about what is the top priority right now for this Biden administration?
11:59Well, I think we don't even need to be a fly on the wall to know what the top priority
12:04for the Biden administration is.
12:05It's to end the war.
12:06I mean, President Biden said it himself, the war needs to end.
12:09They're trying every which way to get it to end.
12:12But unfortunately, it's not up to the Biden administration.
12:15It's up to the warring powers here between Israel and Hamas.
12:20I mean, there's a deal on the table.
12:21Israel says it's ready to go with the deal.
12:24Hamas is still trying to negotiate a better deal for itself.
12:30And as all the previous deals before and all the previous negotiations in the prior months,
12:38the outlook doesn't look good just because it's very simple.
12:42Israel wants all its hostages home before the war ends.
12:48Hamas wants to end the war before it releases the hostages.
12:53So, they're kind of stuck in this potentially irreconcilable situation.
13:00But, you know, negotiations is all about finding ways to make the irreconcilable reconcilable.
13:07And, you know, there's still a chance that these negotiations could work.
13:12Now, what the Biden administration is working on is trying to find some kind of points of
13:16leverage over Hamas and potentially over Israel as well to try to get this deal forward.
13:25But, you know, I think they're struggling.
13:27And just one final very brief question.
13:30Your newspaper reporting this Thursday that there may be as few as some 50 hostages left alive in the Gaza Strip.
13:41That's right.
13:42That's what my colleagues reported today.
13:44We've known for a while now that potentially a majority of the hostages are no longer alive.
13:51I mean, this actually is one of the reasons why the negotiations for a ceasefire are so difficult,
13:58because the kind of the goalposts of how many hostages are released at what phase keeps changing.
14:09Yeah, because Hamas is slowly learning how many of their chips or the hostages are still on the table.
14:16Dov Lieber of The Wall Street Journal, many thanks for speaking with us.
14:19Thank you for having me.
14:21Stay with us.
14:22There's more to come, including our exclusive report on this World Refugee Day from the border between Sudan and South Sudan.
14:30That's coming up.