Feliz Solomon Appeared in the April 29, 2025, print edition as ‘Israel Pressured to Lift Aid Ban in Gaza’.
Israeli officials acknowledge they have just weeks to loosen blockade but are debating how to avoid strengthening Hamas
JERUSALEM—Humanitarian supplies are running out in Gaza after almost two months of an Israeli blockade, spurring debate among officials here over how to turn the spigot back on while maintaining pressure on Hamas.
No aid or commercial goods have been allowed to enter the strip since early March, the longest Israel has ever kept the territory under siege since the war began. The blockade followed a two-month cease-fire and surge of goods that allowed many aid groups and households to stock up, but now they are rapidly running out of everything—flour, fuel, protein bars, tents and even containers to hold clean water.
“Everything we stocked is gone,” said Yousef Rajab, 30, who has been displaced multiple times and now lives with nine relatives crowded in his aunt’s house in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahia. He said communal kitchens in the area have all closed and the few items left in markets have become too expensive. “We only eat one meal a day, at 4 p.m., so that when we go to sleep we’re a little less hungry,” he said.
Israeli officials say that it is a matter of weeks until aid must re-enter the Strip. Officials are now debating the best way to get supplies back into the territory without strengthening Hamas. Some far-right officials want Israel to play a greater role in distributing the aid itself, not shying away from perceptions that Israel is an occupying power in the Gaza Strip even at the cost of taking on greater humanitarian responsibilities.
Israeli far-right ministers have argued that Israel should take over and resettle the territory. The military favors working with international organizations that have distributed the aid throughout the war, according to people familiar with the matter. There are also concerns that aid distribution would be dangerous for soldiers and the military doesn’t have sufficient manpower for it.
If the Israeli military distributes and secures aid, it could strengthen the perception that Israel has effective control of the area, the basic criterion for determining the status of an occupying power, said Eran Shamir-Borer, who was formerly the Israeli military’s top international lawyer and is now at the Jerusalem-based think tank Israel Democracy Institute. That status could expose Israel to more legal responsibility.
“It could be used as an indication by others to say, well you do have effective control because you’re able to distribute in different parts of Gaza,” he said.
If the Israeli military distributes and secures aid, it could strengthen the perception that Israel has effective control of the area, the basic criterion for determining the status of an occupying power, said Eran Shamir-Borer, who was formerly the Israeli military’s top international lawyer and is now at the Jerusalem-based think tank Israel Democracy Institute. That status could expose Israel to more legal responsibility.
“It could be used as an indication by others to say, well you do have effective control because you’re able to distribute in different parts of Gaza,” he said.
In March, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition by human-rights groups asking it to impose on the government greater humanitarian obligations toward Gaza. The court ruled that the country isn’t an occupying power in Gaza and was therefore bound only by the duties of a party to the conflict. It said that Israel met its obligations, but stressed that its decision applied to the policy as it was before the new restrictions.
The ban on aid in March was the first in a series of escalatory steps by Israel to pressure the militant group Hamas to return its remaining hostages as a pause in fighting fell apart. Israel also resumed aerial bombardment and some ground operations in the Strip.
Hamas has yet to submit. The Israeli government has said it won’t back down until all hostages return and Hamas is defeated, but it is bound by international law to facilitate access to aid for civilians caught in conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already faces scrutiny over his conduct of the war, accused of using starvation as a weapon, among other charges, at the International Criminal Court, which he denies.
When Israel announced the ban, it said that the goods provide a lifeline for Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group whose deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked the war in Gaza. Israel has long accused the group of stealing and diverting aid to fund its war effort. Aid groups say the claim is blown out of proportion and that humanitarian needs outweigh the risks.
e’ev Elkin, a lawmaker and a member of Israel’s security cabinet, said several proposals are being discussed about how to resume aid but that there are still disagreements. “One thing is clear: Israel won’t allow distribution of aid in a way that allows Hamas to strengthen and raise the number of terrorists in its ranks,” he said.
One pilot plan under discussion is expected to launch in southern Gaza with private American companies involved in the aid operation, according to people familiar with the matter. The idea is to open a new humanitarian zone where Gazans could be moved and aid couldn’t fall into the hands of Hamas, the people said, but questions still remain about how exactly it would work.
Meanwhile, conditions on the ground are rapidly deteriorating for more than two million Palestinians in Gaza. The United Nations’ food agency said on Friday it had handed out the last of its supplies. Its 25 bakeries were already shut down. The U.N.’s humanitarian office says they have no more tents at all, while stocks of medicine and fuel are critically low. The nonprofit World Central Kitchen, one of the last remaining meal providers in the Strip, said it is out of protein and staff are doing double shifts to make 87,000 loaves of bread each day at Gaza’s only working bakery.
Sally Gebril, a 33-year-old who lives with her four children in Gaza City, said they are so desperate for cooking fuel that she sends her son out in the daytime to collect plastic trash and other flammable debris to burn beneath her cookware. Finding food to put on top of it is another challenge, with handouts depleted and markets unaffordable. “We’ve had days where we couldn’t find anything to eat,” she said.
The U.N. said almost 3,700 children were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in March, up from about 2,000 the month prior, despite a similar number being screened. Dr. Karam Abu Riyash, a pediatrician at Al Awda Hospital in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, said that “dehydration and malnutrition are widespread.” He said the facility has little left to give them but vitamin C, much of it expired.
Three months into President Trump’s second term, the White House isn’t putting public pressure on Israel to end the blockade. Trump said last week that he spoke with Netanyahu and the two “are on the same side of every issue.” Later asked by a reporter whether they discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Trump said the subject did come up. “We’ve got to be good to Gaza…those people are suffering,” Trump said, adding, “we’re gonna take care of that.”
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said last week that an official from the U.N.’s World Health Organization called on him to pressure Israel to restore the flow of aid. Huckabee responded by saying the pressure belongs on Hamas, suggesting aid would resume once the group signs a cease-fire agreement and frees remaining hostages.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that the country is acting in accordance with the law and that the situation was being closely monitored. “Whenever it becomes necessary to allow additional aid, it must be ensured that it doesn’t pass through Hamas, which exploits humanitarian aid to maintain control over the civilian population and to profit at their expense—profits that fund and sustain terror infrastructure used to target IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians,” Katz wrote on X, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
Hamas has denied stealing aid.
Humanitarian workers say there is no need for a new system and urge Israel to open the borders and let them resume their work. Jonathan Fowler, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, tasked with supporting displaced Palestinians, said no evidence has been presented of systemic or large-scale misuse of aid, though supplies are sometimes looted and prices are volatile.
“By definition, war zones aren’t nice places, this is never going to be 100% perfect,” he said, “but the U.N. humanitarian system does its job, and must be allowed to do it.”
Write to Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com