New military corridors, airstrikes, evacuations and blockades of aid shipments are exacerbating the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Is Israel paving the way for Trump's plans for Gaza as the "Riviera of the Middle East"?
Israel is increasing pressure on Gaza. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israeli forces had created a new security corridor between the cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis in the southern part of the enclave. "We are dividing the strip and increasing the pressure step by step so that they hand over the hostages", Netanyahu argued. And according to the latest information, the Israeli military has expanded its offensive to the northern part of the strip, with the aim of creating a buffer zone along the border, ARD writes.
On Thursday, Hamas rejected the Israeli offer for a new ceasefire and insisted that it would release the remaining 59 hostages only in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a long-term ceasefire and Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
About 60% of Gaza is uninhabitable
Meanwhile, the new Israeli moves have led to the displacement of about 142,000 Palestinians, including residents of Rafah, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East reported.
According to Olga Cherevko of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about 60% of Gaza is currently inaccessible due to the evacuation ordered by The Israeli military. At least 1,042 Palestinians have been killed in renewed airstrikes since March 24, health officials in Hamas-controlled Gaza say.
The UN World Food Programme said this week that it had to close all of its bakeries because of a month-long Israeli blockade on supplies. Mohammed al-Kurd, a father of 12, told The Associated Press that his children go to bed without dinner. "We tell them to be patient and we will bring flour in the morning. We are lying to them, we are lying to ourselves", the agency quoted him as saying.
50 thousand are the alleged victims of the conflict
According to the Israeli COGAT service, which is responsible for Palestinian affairs, more than 25 thousand trucks carrying 450 thousand tons of aid entered the territory of Gaza during the truce, which lasted from January to March. According to their reports, this represents about 1/3 of all the aid that has reached Gaza since the war began 15 months ago.
1,150 people were killed in the attacks by the Hamas terrorist group on October 7, 2023, 251 were kidnapped, and Hamas is still holding 59 hostages. 24 of them are believed to be alive. Most of the others were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The war that Israel launched in response to Hamas terrorist attacks has claimed the lives of 50,000 people, according to health authorities in Gaza. These numbers cannot be officially confirmed, but international organizations such as the United Nations consider them relatively accurate. However, the authorities in the enclave do not differentiate between civilian casualties and Hamas fighters.
„There is no longer any will to live"
The humanitarian situation for nearly 2.3 million Palestinians is becoming increasingly dire, organizations working on the ground are alarmed. The Red Cross said that „the resumption of hostilities and violence is leading to a loss of hope on all sides".
„There is no longer any will to live. "Life and death have become one," says Ihab Suliman, a former university professor in Gaza. He himself has been displaced eight times.
Nicholas Orr, a former British military sapper, explains that unexploded ordnance kills about two people a day - mostly children who dig through the rubble of bombed buildings.
This is how 15-year-old Ahmed Azam from Rafah lost his leg. "We were checking the remains of our house," the child told Agence France-Presse. "I didn't know it was explosive, but suddenly it exploded," he says. Azam suffered severe wounds to both legs, one of which was later amputated. But because of the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid, there are no prosthetic limbs in Gaza hospitals.
Is Netanyahu working on Trump's "Riviera" plan for the Middle East?
"There's no explicit statement from Israel that they're blocking humanitarian aid to force people to leave, but that's a logical assumption," says Nathan Brown of George Washington University in the US. "If you bomb a territory, force the population of the Gaza Strip to move from one place to another, and cut off humanitarian aid, then what Israel calls "voluntary departure" doesn't seem voluntary at all," he adds.
For the first time this Sunday, Netanyahu wrote on social media that “we will take care of the common security in the Gaza Strip and allow the implementation of Trump's plan for voluntary migration”. In February, the US president proposed that the US take control of Gaza and turn the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, telling neighboring Egypt and Jordan to accept the Palestinian population. Trump's intentions were rejected, and the UN warned that such a plan would lead to ethnic cleansing.
”We see clearly from the Israeli political echelon and even from the military plans that they want to lay the foundations and start working on the depopulation of Gaza”, says Amjad Iraqi of the International Crisis Group, which works to prevent conflicts. “The method of the attacks and the strategy are the same - collective punishment of the Palestinian population of Gaza. "We see it on the West Bank too," he points out.