US President Donald Trump has been increasing pressure on Israel over recent days, an anonymous source told The Washington Post on Monday.
"Trump has been letting Israel know 'we will abandon you if you do not end this war,'" the source added, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The increase in pressure from Trump came after Israel called up tens of thousands of reservists and ramped up Gaza bombings, the Washington Post added.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that Israel approached it to “resume limited aid delivery” and that logistical discussions were ongoing due to the rapidly changing situation on the ground, the Washington Post reported.
The UN's emergency relief coordinator, Tom Fletcher, wrote that the aid is "a drop in the ocean," and that "it must reach the civilians who need it so urgently, and we must be allowed to scale up.”
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," the Washington Post cited.
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.
Netanyahu to launch alternative, US-backed humanitarian aid mechanism
Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel would launch an alternative, US-backed humanitarian aid mechanism in the coming days, the Washington Post added.
"On the recommendation of the IDF, and out of the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting to defeat Hamas, Israel will introduce a basic amount of food to the population in order to ensure that a famine crisis does not develop in the Gaza Strip," the Prime Minister's Office said. "Such a crisis would jeopardize the continuation of the 'Gideon Chariots' operation to defeat Hamas.
US President Donald Trump, speaking Friday in the United Arab Emirates on the final day of his Mideast swing, said, “We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.”
Yonah Jeremy Bob, Amichai Stein, and Herb Keinon contributed to this report.