Bags of freeze-dried rice, cereals, flour or soups, thrown to the ground and trampled. For six months, hundreds of people, grouped in a collective, Tsav 9, have attacked humanitarian convoys bound for Gaza. A situation condemned by the United States.
This Saturday, June 15, the American government announced that it would freeze the group’s assets under an executive order on violence in the West Bank issued by President Joe Biden in February, as well as prohibit American nationals from any contact with these individuals. “For months, members of this Israeli activist group have repeatedly sought to thwart the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, in particular by blocking roads, sometimes violently, between Jordan and Gaza. They also damaged trucks and spilled vital humanitarian aid they contained onto the road,” he recalled in a statement.
It all started at the beginning of January. Israel then opens, under international pressure, the Kerem Shalom crossing point in order to bring humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, while the Rafah crossing, controlled by Egypt, has reached its transit limits . If the decision is welcomed by the United States, it does not go down well with certain Israelis, who decide to mobilize via social networks to obstruct the passage of aid to the Gazan population. This is the birth of the Tsav 9 collective, named in reference to “Tsav 8” (“Order No. 8” in French) – the alert code sent to Israeli army reservists in the event of mobilization. Through their actions, the collective hopes to exert pressure on the authorities to free the remaining Israeli hostages, but also to weaken Hamas, which would benefit from these foodstuffs.
Far-right activists
During an interview given on February 10 to the French-speaking Israeli channel Tandem TV, Franco-Israeli Rachel Touitou, spokesperson for Tsav-9, described the movement as a “citizen’s initiative.” But in reality, it “mainly attracts right-wing and far-right activists”, precise Franceinfo, who followed the collective during one of its actions in Kerem Shalom. Tsav 9 is also supported by very politically marked associations, such as “Israel is Forever”, which defines itself as the “mobilization of French-speaking Zionist forces”, the far-right movement Regavim or the far-right NGO Honenu.
For its part, the Israeli police opened an investigation after the blocking and ransacking, in May, of seven humanitarian aid trucks coming from the occupied West Bank and destined for the Gaza Strip. The political class is more divided. While the former Minister of Defense, Avigdor Liberman, brought the May 15 on his support for Tsav 9, the leader of the Israeli opposition Yaïr Lapid, on the contrary, condemned this “attack” on X.
“It is immoral to destroy food on its way to distribution to starving civilians. But what is even more outrageous is that there are no police or soldiers to stop them. Where are the law enforcement to prevent such an act?” asked Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. With 130 trucks of humanitarian aid per day on average since October 7, the needs of civilian populations in Gaza are far from being met, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).