Israel is due to restore humanitarian aid to Gaza within weeks whether it reaches a new hostage and ceasefire deal with Hamas or not, the Jerusalem Post has learned.
A variety of top governmental figures in early March had said that Israel would permanently block the flow of new humanitarian aid to Gaza unless Hamas agreed to additional hostage exchanges.
However, now Israel is concerned that the extra food aid which Gaza received prior to early March and which it has been using for sustenance since the cut off of new food aid, will run out within weeks.
No decision has been made yet about how the food aid with be distributed, but IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir has made it clear that he opposes IDF involvement in directly distributing the food, though he might not oppose the IDF providing security for food aid distribution to make sure that it is not given directly to Hamas.
However, absent a local Palestinian force or Arab peacekeeping force which can remain with the Palestinians even after the aid is initially given out, Hamas has found ways to steal the food aid afterward during similar pilot programs to break Hamas’s stranglehold on food aid in 2024.
The government’s and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hope had always been that the combined impact of halting new food aid, of a renewed IDF invasion of Gaza since March 18-19, and of diplomatic pressure from the new administration of US President Donald Trump, would lead to a new hostage deal in less than the three months or so that it would take for the extra food in Gaza inventory to run out.
From January 19 to early March, Gaza received around 650 trucks of aid per day, far more than the estimated 200 to 300 trucks of food aid per day that it is estimated to need, leaving a surplus of food aid for the last two months which avoided any real threat of starvation in the Strip.
Yet, the sides have so far failed to reach a new deal, with Hamas offering to exchange five to 10 hostages to Israel for a temporary ceasefire of months, followed by a permanent ceasefire and IDF withdrawal from Gaza in exchange for the rest of the hostages, and Netanyahu demanding Hamas’s leaders leave Gaza and that its fighters disarm.
Though a deal is still possible, with a variety of new ideas recently being proposed, such as a six month ceasefire in exchange for around half of the hostages, but without Israel committing to withdraw from Gaza or to end the war, it is now just as likely that Israel will widen its invasion in the near future, the Post has learned.
Country could see massive reservist call up to prepare for larger invasion of Gaza
As such, the Post understands that in the near future, the country could see a massive reservist call up to prepare for a much larger invasion of Gaza, or at the very least a partial large scale call up of reservists.
Netanyahu, the cabinet , and the IDF are debating about how much push back they will get from reservists if they call up too many and for too long a time period after the war has already lasted around 19 months and large portions of the country support ending the war to get all of the hostages back now, despite Netanyahu’s leanings.
Some officials believe that if they do a partial large scale call up, that will allow the IDF to intensify its invasion and to hold on to more territory in Gaza in terms of pressuring Hamas, but that avoiding a full massive call up as in October 2023, can also avoid having to call up reservists who might embarrass the army by refusing to show up.
Alternatively, only a partial large scale call up will not provide sufficient soldiers for making the Gaza invasion large enough to actually influence Hamas’s calculus and will leave Israel’s borders under-guarded.
As things stand, it is possible that reservists may be used more for border security in places like Lebanon and Syria in order to be able to shift more mandatory service soldiers to the Gaza invasion.
On April 16, Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that Israel would likely eventually backtrack on its vow not to allow the provision of more humanitarian aid to Gaza before the Israeli hostages are returned, but he did not give a timeframe.
Katz's statement left many questions unclear, as 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.
Following Katz’s statement, IDF sources told the Post that no deals had been cut with private companies to takeover the food aid distribution.
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 direct provision of food to Palestinian civilians, without the intervention of Hamas, but the program was never workable or faced push back within the government from hard right minister 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 what 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.
Seemingly to try to dilute the admission and preempt attacks from Smotrich and Ben Gvir, on April 15 Katz had buried the food aid admission in a longer statement about crushing Hamas, regaining all of the hostages, and threatening a wider war.
Katz’s April 16 statement also saw a harsh verbal attack by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, which in turn led to the defense minister issuing 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.
Now it appears the future has arrived.