Humanitarian aid has started to find its way into Gaza 10 weeks after the suspension ordered by Israel on 2 March. On the evening of 19 May, following serious US pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the go ahead for the entry of a few trucks of humanitarian aid.
According to a source in an international humanitarian organisation that works in Gaza, nine trucks carrying children’s food and supplements were supposed to enter Gaza before midnight Monday. By the early hours of Tuesday 20 May, only four of the nine trucks had been processed. Speaking on Tuesday noon, the source said that security screening of the other five trucks was still pending.
No fuel is expected to enter. “Maybe later, we don’t know, but the hospitals are suffering because of the lack of fuel just as they are coming under continued indiscriminatory Israeli military strikes,” the humanitarian source said.
Informed diplomatic sources in Cairo say that the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza was the single promise to Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman that US President Donald Trump made during his visit to Riyadh last week. The promise was a pay-back-gesture for the role the Saudis played, with Qatari and Egyptian mediators, to secure the release of an Israeli-American hostage last week ahead of the beginning of Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.
“Trump is facing issues inside the US over the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza. He told the Saudis and the Qataris that he will not allow the famine in Gaza to get much worse,” said a regional diplomat informed on the talks. The source said that tensions between Trump and Netanyahu are “mostly” about humanitarian aid. He added that the decision announced on Monday by US Vice President JD Vance to cancel a trip he was planning to Israel was not just about the US not wanting to come across as “publicly” endorsing the expanded ground invasion in Gaza that Netanyahu ordered on Sunday, but also a sign of dismay over the limitations Israel is putting on the entry of humanitarian aid.
The source said that the US accepted the Israeli position to exclude UNRWA, OCHA and other UN and international humanitarian organisations from the distribution of relief and agreed with Israel to allow an American security company, run by a group of American-Israelis, to be in charge of the distribution of aid, yet Netanyahu is continuing to stall.
“Netanyahu is stalling for two reasons,” said the source. First, he wants to use the devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza to force Hamas into making bigger concessions. Second, he wants “to push all Palestinians to Rafah, and maybe some pockets in the middle of the Strip, before he starts a massive deportation plan.”
In the process, the source said, Netanyahu will allow some humanitarian aid to trickle in every now and then to avoid further tensions with Washington.
On Sunday, as Netanyahu was expanding his ground operation, Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff told the press that the US will work to avoid a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, adding that some complicated logistic details still need to be worked out.
In parallel, Netanyahu shrugged off Western attempts to pressure him over the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Earlier in the week, the leaders of Canada, France, and the UK threatened to take concrete action against Israel if it does not stop its “military operation” and “immediately” allow for the entry of humanitarian aid.
The leaders of the three countries said that the amount of aid Netanyahu is allowing into Gaza is totally inadequate. For his part, UN humanitarian relief chief Tom Fletcher said the number of aid trucks cleared to enter is a “drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed”.
By Tuesday, more members of the European Union said that they support moves to get Israel to show more commitment to international humanitarian law.
The back and forth over the humanitarian situation in Gaza is being conducted while talks on a ceasefire in Doha continue to stall, despite the decision of Netanyahu to extend the stay of the Israeli delegation in the Qatari capital.
“Netanyahu is playing games,” said an informed Egyptian source. “Last week, we were very near a deal that would have allowed for the release of seven to nine Israeli hostages in return for a less than two months ceasefire but at the last moment Netanyahu turned around and said that he wanted half of the hostages and half of the bodies in return for less than two weeks.”
The source added that while the talks in Doha were ongoing, Netanyahu opted to expand the ground operation that is cutting Gaza into disconnected strips and “will inevitably force a new, massive Palestinian displacement in Gaza”.
This, he said, is happening while Israel is aggressively attacking and conducting demolitions in the West Bank. Palestinian media said this week that Israel is engaged in one of the most aggressive demolition schemes in decades and some of the demolished houses are being turned into Israeli military posts.
In press statements, Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the National Palestinian Initiative, said that what Gaza is going through is similar to the 1948 Nakba and that if Israel manages to force the displacement of Palestinians from the Strip “the disaster could be much worse.”
In Cairo, concern over what is happening on the ground is high for two reasons. The first relates to the consequences of the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and, maybe, in the West Bank. The second relates to the lack of any international appetite to discuss a political process that could lead to a two-state solution.
According to Hisham Youssef, a former Egyptian diplomat involved for over two decades in official and track-two diplomatic talks on the Palestinian-Israeli front, concern over the Palestinian question is perfectly legitimate. What is unfolding on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, he said, is not just another chapter of Israeli coercion of Palestinians but rather “one of the last battles that Israel is having to liquidate the Palestinian question.”
“This is predominantly a battle of wills. The Palestinians are resisting hard but Netanyahu is fighting an aggressive war to make Gaza Egypt’s responsibility, one way or the other, and to make the West Bank a Jordanian responsibility.”
While both Egypt and Jordan are pushing back, all this is happening within a regional and an international context in which the focus is restricted to allowing the entry of humanitarian aid.
“It is critical that humanitarian aid gets into Gaza, but the question is about more than aid,” says Youssef. Short of a firm Arab position and a prompt end to Palestinian splits, he adds, it is hard to see Netanyahu not pushing the Palestinian Nakba to the maximum.
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