For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the UN and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.

But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the UN, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.

In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the UN aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.

Now, with hunger at crisis levels in the territory, Israel is coming under increased international pressure over its conduct of the war in Gaza and the humanitarian suffering it has brought. Doctors in the territory say that an increasing number of their patients are suffering from — and dying of — starvation.

More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups warned this past week of “mass starvation” and implored Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian assistance. The EU and at least 28 governments, including Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip-feeding of aid” to Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents.

Israel has largely brushed off the criticism.

David Mencer, a government spokesman, said this week that there was “no famine caused by Israel”. Instead, he blamed Hamas and poor coordination by the UN for any food shortages.

Israel moved in May toward replacing the UN-led aid system that had been in place for most of the 21-month Gaza war, opting instead to back a private, American-run operation guarded by armed US. contractors in areas controlled by Israeli military forces. Some aid still comes into Gaza through the UN and other organizations.

The new system has proved to be much deadlier for Palestinians trying to obtain food handouts. According to the Gaza health ministry, almost 1,100 people have been killed by gunfire on their way to get food handouts under the new system, in many cases by Israeli soldiers who opened fired on hungry crowds. Israeli officials have said they fired shots in the air in some instances because the crowds came too close or endangered their forces.

The military officials who spoke to The New York Times said that the original UN aid operation was relatively reliable and less vulnerable to Hamas interference than the operations of many of the other groups bringing aid into Gaza. That’s largely because the UN managed its own supply chain and handled distribution directly inside Gaza.

Hamas did steal from some of the smaller organisations that donated aid, as those groups were not always on the ground to oversee distribution, according to the senior Israeli officials and others involved in the matter. But, they say, there was no evidence that Hamas regularly stole from the UN, which provided the largest chunk of the aid.

A Hamas representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

An internal US government analysis came to similar conclusion, Reuters reported on Friday. It found no evidence of systematic Hamas theft of US-funded humanitarian supplies, the report said.

“For months, we and other organizations were dragged through the mud by accusations that Hamas steals from us,” said Georgios Petropoulos, a former UN official in Gaza who oversaw aid coordination with Israel for nearly 13 months of war. The senior military officials and others interviewed by The Times spoke on the condition of anonymity.

New York Times News Service