https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/19/israel-gaza-aid-netanyahu/
May 19, 2025
TEL AVIV — Israel plans to take control of all of the Gaza Strip while restarting “minimal” aid deliveries to the enclave, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, describing potential mass starvation there as a “red line” that could cost Israel its support from the United States.
In a video posted on social media, Netanyahu said that while Israel was deploying“massive force to take control of all of the Gaza Strip … we cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons.”
He said Israel’s “closest friends in the world,” including U.S. politicians who were “unwavering supporters of Israel for decades,” told him that they would arm Israel and defend it at the U.N. Security Council but that “they cannot handle pictures of mass starvation.”
The address came as Israeli troops expanded their ground operations in Gaza, ordering on Monday the forced evacuation of the southern city of Khan Younis, where residents reported heavy bombardment overnight. It was also the first time Israel has publicly acknowledged the threat of hunger in the territory, despite repeated warnings from global hunger experts, including this month, that the population was at risk of famine.
Israel halted all food, fuel and aid to Gaza on March 2 after an eight-week ceasefire with Hamas, imposing the longest siege of a war that started with the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. Two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said that in talks with Hamas, the U.S. guaranteed Israel would allow some relief to enter Gaza if they released American Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, 21.
On Monday, Hamas official Basem Naim said the group welcomed the resumption of aid but did not say whether it was linked to Alexander’s release. In a statement on Facebook, he acknowledged that the amount of aid would be “insufficient … compared to the real needs of the people.” But, he said, Israel’s decision to allow some trucks in could “only be seen as a break in its will.”
Videos filmed early on May 19 show smoke billowing over Khan Younis in southern Gaza as explosions echo in the background. (Video: The Washington Post)
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Monday that it was approached by Israeli authorities to “resume limited aid delivery” and that discussions around logistics were ongoing because of the rapidly changing situation on the ground.
Aid agencies said they were informed overnight that from Monday through Friday about 100 aid trucks per day would be allowed to enter. Late on Monday, COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry unit that coordinates civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that five trucks of aid, including “food for babies,” had crossed into Gaza. At a briefing earlier in the day, foreign ministry official Edan Bar Tal said that only baby food would enter on Monday.
“A drop in the ocean,” Tom Fletcher, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement on X. “It must reach the civilians who need it so urgently, and we must be allowed to scale up.”
In Israel, Netanyahu’s sharp pivot followed new public and behind-the-scenes pressure from the Trump administration. During a tour of Persian Gulf nations last week, Trump said that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza. Israel was excluded from the itinerary, in which Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
“Trump’s people are letting Israel know, ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war,’” said a person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Netanyahu said that the move gives Israel leverage against Hamas, while also laying the groundwork for a more substantial military campaign in case ceasefire talks, underway now in Qatar, hit a dead end.
The prime minister said Monday that Israel would launch an alternative, U.S.-backed humanitarian aid mechanism in the coming days, by which the Israeli military would secure distribution centers run by private American contractors and bypass the U.N. organizations that have so far handled most of the relief.
The centers, he said, were intended for civilians but not for Hamas, which Israel has repeatedly accused of pillaging and profiting from the inflow of humanitarian aid while claiming that the risk of famine was “engineered by Hamas.” (Aid groups and some U.S. officials dispute the claim, and Israel has not provided evidence of such large-scale theft.)
Netanyahu’s decision drew stinging criticism from across the political spectrum, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who accused Netanyahu of making “a grave mistake.”
He “sold the idea of resuming aid in the Sunday night cabinet meeting by saying it was only a technicality,” said the person familiar with the discussions.
But the prime minister’s other coalition partners publicly supported the move, echoing the Israeli leader’s claims in the video statement that it would not affect Israel’s “interconnected” war aims of destroying Hamas and returning the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, 23 of whom Israeli authorities believe are alive.
The aid entering Gaza “will not reach Hamas,” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday. “It will allow civilians to eat, our friends around the world to continue providing us with international protection at the U.N. Security Council and The Hague, and us to keep fighting, with God’s help, until victory.”
More than than 53,300 people in Gaza have been killed over 19 months of war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says most of the dead are women and children. In recent days, Israel has intensified aerial bombardments, killing hundreds more.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it was preparing for “an unprecedented attack” on Khan Younis and ordered residents to flee to the coastal area, Mawasi, a sprawling tent encampment hosting many of Gaza’s displaced.
Israeli forces staged an overnight attack in the city that included fighter jets, helicopters and dozens of airstrikes, residents said. Israel did not comment specifically on the strikes, but the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group allied with Hamas, said one of its commanders was killed during a morning raid in Khan Younis.
“The scene is terrifying, like the horrors of Judgment Day,” said Malik Shibari, an architect who said he fled the city to Mawasi with his children.
“All of the people are now evacuating toward us, but there are no empty places,” he said, adding that residents have been arriving on foot, carrying only basic belongings and without tents to sleep in.
Cheeseman reported from Beirut and Parker from Jerusalem.