Israeli Cabinet Ministers have approved a plan to take over the Gaza Strip and remain there for an undetermined amount of time.
The plan is allegedly designed to rescue Israeli captives from Hamas. Israel says it will flatten every building in Gaza if a ceasefire and hostage deal isn’t reached by next week, when President Trump visits the region. In an interview with Drop Site News earlier this week, Hamas official Osama Hamdan said the group would not enter ceasefire talks unless the deadly assault on Gaza stops.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Gaza’s population “will be moved, to protect it” before the “forceful operation” begins.
An Israeli official told Axios that Trump has given the green light for Netanyahu to do whatever he sees fit in the region. At a press briefing this week, State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that Hamas has to be “wiped out of Gaza completely.“
“We are finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a group of settlers at a recent conference. “We are no longer afraid of the word ‘occupation.’ We are conquering Gaza, clearing it out and taking control of every area we enter.”
“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to… the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” he continued.
Israel’s cabinet also effectively approved a plan to deliver Gaza aid through the use of private contractors. According to a Washington Post report, the operation will be handled by Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, two U.S. security companies.
SRS is run by former CIA senior intelligence officer Phil Reilly, while UG Solutions is manned by Jameson Govoni, a former Green Beret with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The contractors will be armed, but they lack detention authority.
Under the new plan, 60 trucks would deliver aid to Gaza every day. That’s just one-tenth of the volume that was allowed in during the two-month ceasefire period.
The trucks would initially deliver to six designated hubs, each serving 5,000 to 6,000 households. A representative for each household would pick up a parcel of food and hygiene supplies once every two weeks.
Human rights groups and advocates have criticized the move.
“It’s a joke,” the head of an international aid nonprofit told the Post. “Sixty trucks a day are just a tactic by Israel to ease international pressure, not a real effort to address the humanitarian crisis.”
“It is not an aid plan. It is an aid denial plan,” tweeted Just Security Director Adil Haque. “It makes a mockery of international humanitarian law.”
“The design of the plan presented to us will mean large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies,” said the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), which operates under the U.N. Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in a statement. “It contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy. It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarized zones to collect rations, threatening lives, including those of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement.”
Israel has enforced a blockade on Gaza since March 2, causing severe food shortages. Last month, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that its warehouses are now empty and its soup kitchens are rationing stocks.
The UN says that almost 3,700 Gazan children were diagnosed with child malnutrition in April, an 82% increase from February. Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) says more than 3,500 children below the age of five “face imminent death by starvation.”
“The government of Israel is starving Gaza to death,” tweeted Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) “It’s a war crime to use starvation as a weapon. The only way to end this genocide is with an arms embargo. Time for my colleagues to end their silence.”
At a White House press conference this week, Trump claimed that the U.S. would make sure that aid gets into Gaza and blamed the current conditions on Hamas.
“We are going to help the people of Gaza get some food,” the president told reporters. “People are starving and we are going to help them get some food. A lot of people are making it very bad.”
“If you look, Hamas is making it impossible,” he continued. They are taking everything that’s brought in, but we’re going to help the people of Gaza because they are being treated very badly by Hamas.”
Neither Trump nor the Israeli government has provided any evidence backing up the claim that Hamas is stealing aid.
In recent weeks, groups of armed looters have been confiscating food and supplies in the area. A new Mondoweiss report shows that Israel has either turned a blind eye to this development or actively fomented the chaos. Some eyewitnesses say that the gangs could be receiving Israeli support as part of a “coordinated effort to spread insecurity” in Gaza.
“These acts are not spontaneous,” Ismail Thawabta, the head of the Government Media Office in Gaza, told Mondoweiss. “They are not the result of hunger or necessity, as is being said, but are backed by malicious intentions aiming to sow chaos and damage the social fabric.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health estimates that nearly 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since October 7.
