An American construction and logistics company is hiring truck drivers, including from the countries of Serbia and Georgia, to ferry supplies into Gaza for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Haaretz reported on Monday.
Arkel International, based in the southern US state of Louisiana, is a subcontractor of the GHF, the Israeli daily reported. It recruits the drivers, who are housed in a hotel on a southern Israeli kibbutz and drive truckloads of aid into Gaza once or twice a day, escorted by the Israel Defense Forces. Altogether, Haaretz reported, the company has brought dozens of employees to Israel.
The GHF, which is backed by Israel and the US, began operating in May after a nearly three-month aid blockade Israel had imposed on the Strip. The group seeks to circumvent Hamas in the distribution of aid, amid Israeli allegations that the terror group regularly hijacks deliveries under the existing UN-led aid system.
The UN and other aid groups have rejected the GHF, accusing it of violating humanitarian principles of neutrality and of putting aid seekers in harm’s way. The UN says more than 1,300 people have been killed at aid distribution points, many of them by Israeli fire near GHF sites. The IDF has acknowledged firing warning shots but says the UN’s casualty numbers are inflated, without providing its own.
On its LinkedIn page, Arkel describes itself as “an infrastructure and technical services company helping organizations, governments and militaries work successfully in the world’s most austere and remote locations.” It is a subcontractor of the GHF along with Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, and is focused on logistics, it confirmed to Haaretz.
It was registered as a foreign company in Israel on May 13, shortly before GHF began operations, Haaretz said, and is represented in Israel by businessman Hezi Bezalel, who has served as Israel’s honorary consul in Rwanda.
Haaretz reported that the group has recruited drivers by offering them double what they make in their home countries, to the tune of about NIS 4,000 ($1,170) per month. It delivers goods from the Kerem Shalom border crossing to the four GHF sites in southern and central Gaza.
“My boss gave me an offer to go to Israel via a broker, and said I could make twice as much and even more,” one 32-year-old Georgian truck driver told Haaretz. “Our job is to set out in the morning in a convoy of trucks and go into Gaza. The Israeli army escorts us to the distribution area. We arrive with the trucks, they unload them for us there and we leave right away. Sometimes, there are two of those trips per day.”
The drivers said their contracts are due to expire in September but could be renewed, Haaretz reported.