Israel sought to push back against its growing isolation over starvation in Gaza on Tuesday by allowing some private businesses to restart importing goods into the enclave, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weighed the next steps in the nearly two-year war against Hamas.
Israel has faced growing international condemnation over conditions in Gaza, where more than one in three people are not eating for days in a row, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program. Many aid agencies and countries, including some of Israel’s traditional allies, blame Israeli policies for the hunger crisis.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials have tried to show they are making efforts to allow aid into Gaza, pausing fighting in some areas and designating secure routes for convoys.
On Tuesday, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that regulates the flow of aid, said that it was allowing some private businessmen to deliver goods into Gaza. Israel broadly barred businesses from doing that last year, saying that the trade was propping up Hamas.
At home, Mr. Netanyahu is playing to a different audience. The prime minister’s political survival depends on a coalition stacked with right-wing hard-liners and religious nationalists, some of whom have agitated for Israel to conquer all of Gaza.
But nearly two years after Hamas’s devastating October 2023, attack ignited the war in Gaza, the government has not achieved its stated aims: Destroy Hamas, free all of the hostages seized in the assault, and prevent any future threat to Israel from Gaza.
On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said he had held a three-hour meeting with Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff. General Zamir presented “the options for continuing the military campaign in Gaza,” the prime minister’s office said, without saying what they were.
But Mr. Netanyahu’s office also told some Israeli reporters that the Israeli leader could expand military operations across all of Gaza. If that were to happen, the Israeli military would attack parts of the territory where it believes hostages are being held, potentially endangering the captives’ lives.
Three officials briefed on the government’s thinking cautioned that no decision has been made to expand the Israeli military campaign. By keeping his intentions ambiguous, Mr. Netanyahu may be trying to keep his far-right coalition partners happy without committing to any particular course of action, they added.
Israel is trying to refocus attention overseas on the plight of Israeli and foreign hostages held by Hamas. Israel believes about 20 living hostages are still in Gaza, as are the bodies of 30 others, and called for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the situation.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied militant group, published videos and photographs of two emaciated captives last week. The haunting images led to a new round of international condemnation of Hamas and calls for the unconditional release of all the hostages.
But as Israel’s foreign minister meets diplomats at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza shows little sign of abating. Scores of Palestinians have died from malnutrition-related causes, according to the Gaza ministry of health.
More than 60,000 people in Gaza have been killed in the campaign, including thousands of children, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Most of the enclave’s two million residents have been displaced, often forced into swelling tent camps amid the rubble.
Starvation has gripped Gaza, which the United Nations says is on the brink of famine. Civil order has almost totally collapsed, leading to assaults on aid convoys as crowds of desperate Palestinians attempt to obtain food.
“I’ve worked in some of the harshest places you can imagine,” Antoine Renard, the local director for the World Food Program, said in an interview. “I have never, ever seen this in my whole career.”
The Israeli blockade of Gaza this year, which stopped practically all supplies of food, fuel and medicine, lasted roughly 80 days. Even after Israel eased restrictions, the amount of aid passing into Gaza has remained far lower than at most other points during the war, according to Israeli military data.
Israeli officials have blamed the United Nations for failing to adequately distribute food already inside Gaza. U.N. officials say that Israel frequently delays or denies requests to move convoys. They also cite the challenge of operating in a lawless war zone.
Despite some optimism that Israel and Hamas were moving toward a truce last month, indirect negotiations between them, via Arab mediators, remain deadlocked.
In recent days, U.S. and Israeli officials have pushed an “all or nothing” deal. But it seems unlikely that such a strategy would work as both Israel and Hamas appear unwilling to compromise.
In Israel, public pressure has focused on the conditions of the hostages still in Gaza.
“They are on the absolute brink of death. In their current, unimaginable condition, they may have only days left to live,” Ilay David, the brother of one of the hostages seen in a Hamas video over the weekend, said at a rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
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