The video is not related to the current situation between HAMAS and Israel. Foreign fact-checkers claim that the video is older and does not relate to a humanitarian response to the blockade imposed by Israel from October 2023. For the first time this video was published on the social network TikTok on 31st August 2023. The original title, as well as the comparison with other similar video-materials, shows that it is a smuggling operation on the borderline between Libya and Egypt, writes Truthmeter.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook sharing video-material, saying the following:
Egyptians carrying drinking water on their backs for the Palestinians once Israel cut off their water-supply. The video is taken on the border between Egypt and Palestine, while the people on the video are Egyptians carrying drinking water on their backs for the Palestinians once Israel cut their water-supply.
The video was published 16th October 2023.
However, the video is old and does not depict the current situation between HAMAS and Israel.
As specified by the fact-checkers of Lead Stories, it is not true that Egyptians are currently delivering humanitarian aid in food and water on their backs from Egypt to Gaza. The video in the post is older and it is not related to a humanitarian response provoked by Israel’s blockade from October 2023. According to Lead Stories, this video was published for the first time on the social network TikTok on 31st August 2023.
The original title of the video, as well as the comparison with other similar video clippings shows a smuggling operation on the border between Libya and Egypt. The video published on 31st August on TikTok has markings from the flags of Libya and Egypt. Salloum or Salum is a village in the northwestern part of Egypt on the border with Libya. This is not close to Gaza, which is on the border with the northeastern part of Egypt.
The fact-checkers of Misbar have checked this video that was incorrectly presented on 10th September 2023 with false information that the border was Egypt-Libya where “thousands of Egyptians cross the border either to work in Libya or illegally immigrate to Europe”.
The bags that these people are carrying on their backs in the video are the same in shape, size and colour and that they have a symbol. This is an indicator that these people are crossing the border as part of an organized activity, not migration of people. Lead Stories cannot determine for sure the contents of these packages, but from numerous similar video material, its seems that a smuggling operation is happening, as described in an article from 2017 published in the international journal “Practice and Culture of Smuggling in the Borderland between Egypt and Libya”. On page 12 of this document, 4 types of smuggling operations are described, and the most frequent one overlaps with the contents presented on the video of the post we are fact-checking, published Lead Stories in its fact-check.
Fact-checkers from the Quint, also published the video was old, and that it dated back before the October conflict between HAMAS and Israel.
There are four principal forms of smuggling in the borderland that go under different names and involve different practices. The first one is called tigarat al-shanta or trading by bag. Tigarat al-shanta (smuggling by bag) is the most common and accepted form of smuggling in the daily border traffic between Egypt and Libya or between Salloum and Amsaad. It is a form of petty trade and smuggling that is practiced by individual male members who travel to Libya for a couple of days and return to Egypt with a bag filled with tea, clothes, cigarettes, Chinese mobile phones and other such goods, specifies Lead Stories.
Due to all of the above-noted facts, the post fact-checked is assessed as untrue. The video is not about Egyptians carrying food and water on their backs for Palestinians in Gaza following the recent situation between HAMAS and Israel.
