Israeli authorities said no commercial goods have entered Gaza for two days, after a halt attributed to merchants’ anger over taxes imposed by Hamas.
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Israeli authorities said that no commercial goods have entered the Gaza Strip for two days, raising concerns that shortages could worsen in the territory.
COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees humanitarian affairs in Gaza, announced the suspension of commercial shipments on Wednesday, saying it followed a decision made by Palestinian merchants the day before.
COGAT’s deputy spokesperson, Lt. Daniel Kantorovich, said his agency was prepared to coordinate the entry of merchants’ trucks as usual, but that vendors told Israel it was cancelling coordination due to Hamas’s taxation mechanism and threats against them.
The suspension has affected shipments of goods including fruit and winter clothing, according to COGAT’s explanation of the halt, and it has the potential to immediately reduce Gaza’s available supplies because the territory is described as fully reliant on goods Israel permits through border crossings.
Aid groups and humanitarian workers warned that humanitarian deliveries alone cannot control conditions in Gaza’s markets. Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said, “The humanitarian sector on its own cannot meet the needs of all the people.” She added, “The markets need to be functioning.”
COGAT said no private-sector vendors attempted to import goods into Gaza after local merchants alerted Israel on Tuesday.
However, Nahed Sheheiber, head of Gaza’s private truckers union, disputed Israel’s account, saying it was truckers and not merchants who made the decision to stop shipments. “The merchants are not the ones who stopped the shipments,” he said. “The Israeli coordinator is claiming that Gaza’s merchants are responsible, but the truth is that the Israelis are the ones who imposed the restrictions.”
After COGAT’s announcement, Sheheiber’s union met with Gaza’s Ministry of Economy to express concern and to say Israel was using fees levied by the ministry as a pretext to cut off commercial goods. Sheheiber said the ministry had been asking merchants to pay 10,000 shekels (about $3,226) per truck entering Gaza.
At that meeting, Sheheiber said ministry Undersecretary Khaled Al-Raqab told the union that the payment was not a tax but a “donation” sought by the ministry to help pay civil servants in the strip.
The report cited COGAT data and said Gaza’s population, estimated at roughly 2 million people, requires approximately 250 truckloads of goods each day. That figure was described as far below a minimum of 600 trucks a day stipulated by a ceasefire brokered by the U.S. a year earlier.
The wider conflict began after Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, and took 251 hostages. Israel’s response has included a massive bombardment and ground invasion, with the Gaza Health Ministry saying more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 1,400 killed since the ceasefire took effect. The ministry is part of a Hamas-run government and keeps detailed records that are described as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts, though it does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its toll.
COGAT’s suspension comes amid warnings from food insecurity experts that even small disruptions to humanitarian access could undo earlier gains, despite conditions improving after famine was declared in August 2025.
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