Middle East: Israel wants to increase military pressure on Hamas

While Israel is trying to force the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip to make concessions in the hostage negotiations by increasing military pressure, the fighting and anarchic conditions are making it difficult to provide aid to the suffering civilian population. The US is now finally stopping the operation of a provisional port off the coast for the delivery of aid supplies, the US military’s regional command announced. An alternative route to Gaza is planned via the port of Ashdod in Israel.

Details were not immediately known. However, they are confident that the route via Ashdod will be viable and an important route to Gaza, said Sonali Korde of the US Agency for International Development. However, she added that obstacles remain. “The biggest challenge in the Gaza Strip is the insecurity and lawlessness that hampers the distribution of aid once it enters the Gaza Strip and at the border crossings,” she said.

Netanyahu wants more pressure on Hamas

During a heated debate in the Israeli parliament, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu defended his conduct of the war, according to media reports. Only through more military pressure will Hamas be forced to make further concessions. “We were told that Hamas was not prepared to release hostages without our first agreement to end the war. Suddenly they are agreeing,” Netanyahu said. “The more we keep up the pressure, the more they will give in. And that is the only way to free the hostages,” he said.

Netanyahu’s critics accuse the head of government of sabotaging the indirect negotiations with the Islamists to reach an agreement. He governs with ultra-religious and far-right coalition partners who reject concessions to Hamas. Netanyahu, who is facing corruption charges, is dependent on these partners for his political survival. On July 24, he will give a speech to both houses of the US Congress on Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip following the attacks by Hamas on October 7.

Israeli opposition leader Jair Lapid demanded that Netanyahu announce his agreement to a hostage deal during his speech in the US. If he does not intend to do so, Netanyahu should cancel his trip to Washington, Lapid said, according to the Times of Israel. According to local media reports, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad, Daniel Barnea, said at a meeting of the security cabinet that young female hostages held by Hamas had “no time” after more than nine months.

The young women in captivity “have no time to wait for changes to the proposal being discussed,” several Israeli media quoted Barnea as saying at the closed-door meeting. There are concerns that young hostages in the Gaza Strip were raped by their captors. Around 120 abductees are believed to still be in the sealed-off coastal area, but many of them are believed to be dead. Netanyahu reportedly wants changes to the proposal for an agreement currently on the table.

The three-stage plan envisages exchanging hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and finding ways to achieve a permanent ceasefire. Last week, Israeli negotiators traveled to Qatar to continue negotiations. Qatar, Egypt and the USA are mediating between Israel and Hamas. Since then, however, no further high-level meetings have been announced. Participants in the indirect talks recently expressed cautious optimism.

Difficult supply of the Gaza population

Meanwhile, supplying the people in Gaza remains extremely difficult. Trucks carrying aid first reached the sealed-off coastal strip on May 17th via the now-defunct temporary US port. Since then, however, there have been repeated problems. Rough seas had severely damaged the pier belonging to the temporary facility. Distributing the aid was also extremely difficult. Nevertheless, very large quantities of aid had reached Gaza, the US military stressed.

The provisional port was only intended as a temporary solution from the start. Now we are entering a “new phase,” said Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy commander of the US military’s regional command. It is assumed that larger quantities of aid supplies will reach the Gaza Strip via the new route in the coming weeks. Around 2,300 tons are still stored in Cyprus, waiting to be transited via Ashdod to the sealed-off coastal strip.

Delivery will begin in the coming days, Cooper said. As the US news portal “Axios” reported, citing Israeli and US officials, the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, held a secret meeting last week to discuss the reopening of the Rafah crossing in the south of the sealed-off Gaza Strip between Egypt and Gaza as part of a hostage and ceasefire agreement.

Report: Talks about opening the Rafah border crossing

According to US officials, the opening of the Rafah crossing could be a first step in a post-war strategy to stabilize the coastal strip, Axios reported. Israel and Egypt have not yet reached an agreement on how to reopen the important Rafah crossing. Egypt wants PA personnel to operate the crossing in the future, it said. Israel also wants people who are not affiliated with Hamas to manage the crossing, but rejects any official PA involvement.

While the USA wants the Palestinian Authority to be restructured and to regain control of the Gaza Strip in the future, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is against this. Critics accuse him of not developing a plan to stabilize and manage Gaza. In doing so, he is allowing the coastal region to sink into chaos. Israel’s troops are in danger of being drawn into an endless guerrilla war by Hamas.

The war was triggered by the massacre in Israel that terrorists from Hamas and other groups carried out on October 7. They killed around 1,200 Israelis and abducted around 250 others to the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, at least 38,794 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war. The number, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters, cannot currently be independently verified.