The humanitarian crisis of Gaza and the role of the military in bringing down Israel’s military leadership during the crisis: An Israeli prime minister defends israel

The military’s announcement of the humanitarian pause in a social media post was denounced by Mr. Ben-Gvir as “a crazy and delusional approach,” and that “the evil fool” who decided on it had to stop.

Mr. Ben-Gvir and the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have openly criticized the military leadership during the war and have also vowed to bring down Mr. Netanyahu’s government if he agrees to a cease-fire deal before Hamas is fully destroyed — a goal that many experts say is unattainable.

Mr. Eisenkot said that the minister of national security, Itamar Ben- Gvir, was always present at the discussions in the war cabinet.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 this weekend, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and now a centrist politician who quit the emergency wartime government along with his party leader, Benny Gantz, last week, accused Mr. Netanyahu of putting his political needs before those of national security.

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war so far, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

When the war will end is one of the questions Israelis are asking. The cost is going up all the time. At least 10 Israeli soldiers were killed in combat this weekend and an 11th died of wounds sustained days earlier.

The closure of the Rafah border and fighting around it have forced aid groups and commercial vendors to route more of their convoys through Israel, where trucks enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing point. Once the food is inside Gaza, humanitarian organizations transfer it to their own vehicles and distribute it. The groups said that Israel did not do enough to ensure the safety of those delivering aid, citing attacks on aid convoys and workers.

The International Criminal Court in The Netherlands has the authority to take action against the Netanyahus for war crimes. They have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.

There was some confusion about the scope of the pause, but a clarification quickly followed in Yiddish and appeared to be for domestic consumption. The change did not mean a cessation of fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, that statement said, adding that the campaign in the southernmost city of Rafah was continuing. Military officials said the daily pauses were meant only to facilitate the increased distribution of food aid in Gaza, where international organizations have issued dire warnings about hunger.

On the eve of a Muslim holiday and as the Israeli military was making a move, there was uncertainty over the fate of an offer for a cease-fire with Hamas. Officials said Hamas had demanded some unworkable changes to the proposal that was backed by the Biden administration and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.

Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for Cogat, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and that liaises with international organizations, said the move was meant to help clear a backlog of more than 1,000 trucks that had already been inspected by Israel and were waiting on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Israeli Defense Ministry: “I didn’t know” Israel had a New Plan for the Relief and Health Care in the Gaza Strip Before Rafah

“He has a mask for every occasion,” Mr. Harel said in an interview. “For the Americans, he needs to show he is doing more to get aid in. For the Israeli audience he can say ‘I didn’t know’ and go for plausible deniability.”

Amos Harel is a military affairs analyst for the Haaretz newspaper and he calls Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. He said that the military commanders would not have surprised him if they did not give him the exact timing of the tactical change.

According to military officials, the new policy around the humanitarian corridor went into effect on Saturday. Mr. Netanyahu stated that he did not know about the plans until Sunday morning.

The government had made a strange suggestion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only learned of the military plan from news reports.

The Israeli military said on Monday that it had paused operations during daylight hours in parts of southern Gaza, as a new policy announced a day earlier appeared to take hold amid cautious hopes that it would allow more aid to reach residents of the beleaguered territory.

The policy only applies to a seven-mile section of road in southern Gaza, but it doesn’t apply to parts of central Gaza where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled.

Aid groups have been able to more easily access northern Gaza, where fears of famine used to be the highest. Even though there’s improved food supplies in Gaza, aid groups say that health care is still subpar.

Israel regularly says that there are no limits on the amount of aid it allows to enter Gaza and blames disorganized aid groups — as well as theft by Hamas — for the failure to move food from Israeli to Palestinian control.

According to the spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli Defense ministry branch that coordinates with aid groups, they think their main problem is logistical.

“Before Rafah, we had free access to Kerem Shalom basically all day, every day,” said Scott Anderson, the deputy Gaza director for UNRWA, the lead United Nations agency for Palestinians. He said that the access is a little more complex and difficult to get to now due to frequent gunfire and explosions in areas traversed by aid trucks.

“What we had asked for was windows to access Kerem Shalom without having to coordinate so closely with the I.D.F. — to be able to come and go, and the trucks to come and go, with more freedom,” said Mr. Anderson, using the initials of the Israel Defense Forces.

Hamas’s “heavies” are needed for security and security in the city of Zaragoza, a human spokesman said

The military claimed on Monday that it had killed more than 500 people in the city, decreasing the capacity of two of Hamas’s battalions. Two battalions were operating at a low level, the military said.

He noted that they flooded the place with ready to eat food commodities. We need to be morediversified so that this progress can be sustained.