Israel will not allow any humanitarian aid to enter Gaza to pressure Hamas, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday as negotiations around an Israeli proposal for a Gaza ceasefire continued.
Israel has said it will keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, as it vowed to force Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages from the 7 October attacks.
Aid supplies, including food, fuel, water and medicine, have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza since 2 March, more than two weeks before the collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group, with a return to air and ground attacks on the territory.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said on Wednesday that Gaza was becoming a mass grave for Palestinians.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, said it had converted 30 per cent of Gaza into a buffer zone and that it had achieved full operational control over several key areas and routes throughout the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said: “Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population.”
“No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid,” said Katz, who vowed to escalate the conflict with tremendous force if Hamas did not return the hostages.
Amnesty International is among the aid agencies that have described Israel’s blockade on all supplies going into Gaza as a crime against humanity and a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel has denied any violations.
More than 51,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the conflict began, including more than 1,600 since Israel resumed airstrikes and ground operations on 18 March. The Gaza health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but has said more than half of those dead were women and children.
Another 13 people were killed in airstrikes overnight, with a well-known photographer, Fatema Hassouna, among those reported dead in the northern area of the strip.
Doctors and aid groups on the ground said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was becoming worse by the day. “The situation is the worst it has been in 18 months in terms of being deprived of your necessities and the resumption of hostilities and attacks against Palestinians in all of Gaza,” said Mahmoud Shalabi, a director at Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The resumption of aid to Gaza has become a highly inflammatory political issue in Israel. There are 58 hostages still in Gaza, who were taken captive after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, with 24 believed to still be alive. Far-right figures in Benjamin.
Netanyahu government have said no aid should be restored to the civilians of Gaza until Hamas agrees to the hostages’ release.
Also, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said on Wednesday that “As long as our hostages are languishing in the tunnels, there is no reason for a single gram of food or any aid to enter Gaza.”
Katz said Israel intended to eventually set up its own “civilian-based distribution infrastructure” for aid in Gaza, to prevent supplies falling into the hands of Hamas militants, but he gave no timelines or details of how it would be established.
Reports have suggested this could involve the Israel Defence Forces setting up and running logistics centres for aid, and vetted aid agencies being tasked with distributing it. However, the plan remains unclear and the UN is said to have so far refused to hand over the names of employees.
Efforts by mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US to restore the collapsed ceasefire in Gaza and return the hostages have continued to hit stumbling blocks.
Katz said that no matter what deal was agreed, Israeli troops would remain in the buffer zones it had occupied in Gaza, as well as in neighbouring Syria and Lebanon.
Since resuming operations in March, Israeli troops have seized control of 30% of the Gaza Strip, establishing what they describe as an “operational security perimeter”. Hamas has demanded that any hostage deal must guarantee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Katz said: “Unlike in the past, the [Israeli military] is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized.” The military would “remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza, as in Lebanon and Syria”, he said.
