Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday confirmed that Israel is close to backtracking on a vow not to allow the provision of more humanitarian aid to Gaza before the Israeli hostages are returned, and that aid could be restarted soon, though private companies would be used to circumvent Hamas.
Katz’s admission follows a flurry of leaks in recent weeks that Israel would need to restore the flow of aid to Gaza soon if no new ceasefire deal is reached, given that the aid has been cut off for around six weeks.
Although initially Israel said it would permanently cut off aid, and that there were no international law questions at stake given the excess food which Hamas had obtained during the 40-day plus ceasefire from January 19 – early March, the defense minister’s statement acknowledged the reality that without restoring aid soon, Jerusalem could run into new questions of alleged starvation.
In contrast, if Israel restores aid soon, given that many estimates said that Hamas had enough food for at least around three months, the IDF could avoid new claims of attempted starvation by Israel against the Gazan population.
However, Katz’s statement left many questions unclear.
While he referenced private companies for handing out food to Gaza’s population, which he said would sideline Hamas as the party distributing food aid, he did not provide names or details.
This is not the first time that Israel has tried to cut Hamas out of the food aid distribution chain.
As early as January 2024, then-defense minister Yoav Gallant tried to initiate such a program in northern Gaza for the direct provision of food to Palestinian civilians without the intervention of Hamas, but the program was never workable or faced pushback within the government from hard-right ministers Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
Eventually, Israel tried to use the World Food Program and the World Central Kitchen to replace UNRWA for handing out aid, but each organization, at one point or another, withdrew due to being mistakenly struck by IDF forces.
Even when the organizations returned, they eventually handed the food out to Hamas or Hamas took the food from whoever they handed the food to.
It is unclear how private contractors would have large enough and powerful enough armed forces to distribute food aid to over two million Palestinians throughout Gaza on a daily basis and would be able to stay in the field long enough to ensure that Hamas did not, at some point, take over the aid.
Burying food aid admission
Seemingly to try to dilute the admission and preempt attacks from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Katz buried the food aid admission in a longer statement about crushing Hamas, regaining all of the hostages, and threatening a wider war.
Likewise, Katz claimed that Egypt is pressuring Hamas to give up its weapons, though the Gazan terror group has made it clear that such a condition is a nonstarter, and the organization is back up to 20,000-25,000 fighters, according to Israeli intelligence.
IDF sources said that there has not yet been any concrete planning carried out to engage new private contractors to distribute food aid to Gaza.
Katz’s second statement
Ben-Gvir responded to Katz’s statement in a post on X/Twitter, noting, “It’s a shame that we don’t learn from mistakes.”
“As long as our hostages are languishing in the tunnels, there is no reason for a single grain of food or any aid to enter Gaza. Halting the aid is one of the central pressure points on Hamas, and returning it before Hamas is on its knees and has released all our hostages would be a historic mistake.
“I will do everything in my power to ensure that this historic mistake does not happen, and I call on the prime minister and the defense minister not to take this foolish step, which would harm our ability to defeat Hamas and safely bring all our hostages home,” Ben-Gvir wrote.
Following Ben Gvir’s latest attack on Katz for acknowledging the restoration of food aid to Gaza in the future, the defense minister issued a bizarre statement in which he both said that food aid would not be restored multiple times at this moment, but then readmitted that food aid would be restored in the future.
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