The IDF allowed humanitarian aid to start to begin entering the Gaza Strip on Monday – after a two-and-a-half month pause dating back to early March – at almost the same time that it significantly escalated the new invasion of the Strip with five divisions.
In addition, the IDF carried out a special operation in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza early Monday, which among other events, led to the death of senior Palestinian terror operative Ahmad Sarhan.
Regarding the humanitarian aid, reports were that only minimal aid, possibly as few as 20 trucks had entered by press time.
Past Israeli estimates have said that 200-300 trucks of food per day would be needed over time to feed Gaza’s around 2.2 million Palestinians. Other reports have suggested that Israel might try to send a lower volume of aid into Gaza for some period of time.
At the height of the ceasefire in January of this year, up to 500-600 trucks of food were entering Gaza daily, which left a significant surplus of food for Gazans to tide them over during the past two months when new aid was blocked by the IDF.
On Monday, COGAT announced that five UN trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including food for babies, were transferred via the Kerem Shalom Crossing into Gaza. “The IDF will continue to facilitate humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip while making every effort to ensure that the aid does not reach the Hamas terrorist organization,” it said.
However, other sources claimed Monday evening to the Qatari Al Araby Television Network that nine trucks of humanitarian aid arrived on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, will make their way to warehouses in the Gaza Strip the following morning.
Hamas confirmed that Israeli special forces killed Sarhan
For now, the traditional United Nations and international aid groups are passing out the food, but the two companies expected to handle Gaza food aid distribution, beginning in around a week, once they get set up, are American companies Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions.
These are the same companies which, along with certain Egyptian officials, supervised the checking of vehicles seeking to pass through from southern to northern Gaza in January of this year, after the ceasefire at the time between Israel and Hamas went into effect.
The companies’ personnel often have special forces or CIA backgrounds and are qualified to handle complex foreign missions.
Israel’s goal in using these companies is to try to break Hamas’s control of food aid by only handing out food at a series of distribution points, thus ensuring that it is not given to Hamas.
Despite all of this planning, it is unclear whether the US companies or IDF forces will be able to completely prevent Hamas from stealing food from Palestinian civilians once they try to leave the distribution centers with it, to return to their current living quarters.
Next, Hamas confirmed that Israeli special forces had entered Khan Yunis and killed Sarhan, a senior member of the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, another key group in Gaza, in addition to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Later, The Jerusalem Post confirmed those reports.
According to local Gaza media reports, around a dozen undercover IDF special forces members dressed as women entered the heart of Khan Yunis prior to the larger invasion.
During the operation, possibly planned to lead to the arrest of Sarhan but instead led to his death when he resisted with gunfire, Sarhan’s wife and children were arrested, according to Palestinian media.
In response to all of the above, the IDF issued a vague statement, appearing to deny that such an operation had occurred. It referred instead to Operation Gideon’s Chariots occurring throughout the Strip, adding, “Following the reports, there is no change to the situational assessment.”
Monday morning began with a wave of powerful airstrikes around the Khan Yunis area, including Nasser Hospital.The military also carried out strikes in several locations across Gaza, including Deir al-Balah, Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunis, south of Nuseirat, and in Gaza City, overnight between Sunday and Monday.
Hamas reported that more than 148 people were killed in the past 24 hours. Over the weekend, authorities associated with Hamas had said that over 260 Palestinians were killed and over 600 wounded.
The IDF had not responded to allegations regarding Palestinian civilians on Monday, but on Sunday, IDF sources told the Post that the numbers might be correct, broadly speaking. This was with the proviso that at least dozens of those killed had been terrorists.
According to Palestinian security sources, over 400,000 Palestinians have already moved from northern Gaza to the south.
This is one of the major purposes of the current broader invasion: to move most of the civilians out of chunks of northern, central, and southern Gaza into select areas, so that those first areas can then be purged of remaining Hamas terrorists.
As Palestinian civilians move to new areas, the IDF has said it will vet them to make sure they are not carrying weapons. This will not help catch all the Hamas fighters who might move around unarmed, but it will make it harder for armed Hamas members to move throughout the Strip.
Images published by Palestinian media reportedly displayed a wagon left behind by the IDF, which appeared to be part of the camouflage that had allowed the IDF undercover forces to fit in with the local population, which often uses wagons to move around with their belongings.
Later on Monday, IDF Arabic spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee called on residents of Khan Yunis and the surrounding areas to evacuate, in a post on X/Twitter on Monday.
He noted that the IDF would operate against terror groups in the area and told civilians to evacuate westward toward the al-Muwasi humanitarian zone.
Adraee’s evacuation call covered a much larger area than such calls have covered since the IDF renewed hostilities in early March with much smaller incursions.
Additionally, the IDF on Monday confirmed that Combat Engineers from the Yahalom Unit destroyed the tunnel which terrorists used to kill Yahalom soldiers, Capt. Noam Ravid and St.-Sgt. Yaly Seror, in Rafah, earlier in May.
Liran Aharoni and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.