What began in the spring as a largely random phenomenon of desperate civilians stealing from trucks has now morphed into an organized criminal enterprise, aid groups say, and the gangs responsible have become increasingly violent and powerful — compounding the struggle to deliver food, hygiene items and cold-weather supplies to 2 million displaced and hungry people as winter approaches.

In October, the amount of assistance reaching Gazans fell to its lowest point since the early stages of the war, even as U.S. officials demanded that Israel surge aid across the enclave or risk losing some military support. While the threat of famine is most severe in the north, the entire population now faces acute food insecurity, a U.N.-backed panel found this month. COGAT, the Israeli military’s civilian affairs department for the Palestinian territories, has justified restrictions on the flow of goods by alleging repeatedly that Hamas is stealing aid and preventing it from reaching civilians. As Washington urges Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza, looting has become the greatest obstacle to distributing the limited aid that does make it in, according to a U.S. official, who added that Hamas is not behind the attacks — an assessment that was widely shared by those operating on the ground.

“We have not seen any physical interference from Hamas anywhere in our programs, north or south,” an official from a major international aid organization said.

Rise of the gangs

Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza more than a year ago, after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that left 1,200 dead. Hamas and other militants took about 250 people hostage. Israel’s war has flattened much of Gaza; killed more than 43,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; and displaced 1.9 million — 90 percent of the population.

Civil order began to collapse in February, as Israel targeted civilian police officers who had been guarding humanitarian convoys, citing their affiliation with the Hamas-run government. Desperate civilians and criminals began rushing trucks to steal supplies, causing a slowdown in deliveries. Initially, according to aid workers, many of the looters were hungry people trying to feed their families. In May, Israel seized and shut down the Rafah border crossing with Egypt — which had been Gaza’s main lifeline — reducing the number of aid trucks able to enter the enclave. The majority of humanitarian traffic shifted to Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, which leads to a part of southern Gaza where powerful Bedouin families, some involved in organized crime, have long held sway.

By the summer, a lucrative black-market trade in smuggled cigarettes — banned by Israel from entering Gaza during the war — was booming, with organized gangs attacking trucks to search for them. Tobacco became a dominant form of currency. A pack of 20 cigarettes now goes for around $1,000, according to Georgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza office for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, calling it a “cancer” that’s “crept into our supply chain.”

He said cigarettes, originally hidden in produce, were now being found inside cans of food, showing that smuggling begins in factories, with much of the contraband believed to originate in Egypt. The smuggling route runs through the Sinai Peninsula and is linked to the Egyptian branches of the Bedouin tribes in Gaza, aid organizations and transport company executives said.

A spokesman for the Egyptian foreign press office did not respond to a request for comment.

U.N. officials say they have repeatedly asked Israel to clamp down on cigarette smuggling — or let cigarettes in legally — to ease the looting epidemic, but discussions have been fruitless.

In a video filmed by one humanitarian worker in June, and shared with The Post, four men stood or sat on an open-bed truck, one of them using a sharp object to cut into a carton of U.N. aid. They were searching for cigarettes, the worker said.

A video filmed by a humanitarian worker in June and shared with The Post shows men using a sharp object to cut into a carton of U.N. aid. (Video: Obtained by The Post) Over the summer, the United Nations and international aid organizations lost $25.5 million worth of humanitarian goods to looting, according to an Oct. 28 PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post.

Israel cut commercial supply lines to Gaza last month, saying militants were benefiting from the trade, and the number of aid trucks it permitted to enter the Strip plummeted to near record lows. Nearly half of the already diminished food aid the World Food Program moved along the southern Gaza route was stolen, according to the presentation, which was given by OCHA to a group that includes U.N. agencies, nongovernmental organizations and donor countries, including the United States. Gangs used to discard the aid on the road for civilians to pick over after locating stashed cigarettes, an international aid worker said. Now, “in a lot of cases they hijack the entire truck and take it to a warehouse” to resell food and other goods at exorbitant prices on the black market, they added.

Who ultimately profits from the smuggled or stolen goods remains murky. Israeli officials, who have often accused Hamas of hijacking aid and commercial deliveries to enrich itself, acknowledged last week that crime families were behind some of the looting.

“Some looters have connections to Hamas, and some do not,” an Israeli official told journalists at a briefing on Nov. 11, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The man aid groups believe to be the ringleader of the most prolific gang spent time in a Hamas jail on criminal charges before the war, said Adham Shuhaibar’s brother Nahed, the president of the private transportation association in Gaza.