Israel intends to make further advances in the Gaza Strip. Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Israeli armed forces would establish a new security corridor between the towns of Rafah and Khan Yunis in the south. "We are cutting through the Gaza Strip and increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will hand over our hostages," Netanyahu said.
On Thursday, Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal for a new ceasefire. The Palestinian Islamist militia – which Israel and many other countries, including Germany, consider a terrorist organization – confirmed that it is only interested in a permanent ceasefire. As a condition for the release of the remaining 59 Israeli hostages, Hamas is demanding an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the release of additional Palestinian prisoners.
Israel blocks humanitarian aid
The Palestinian population has once again been hit hard by renewed clashes between the Israeli military (IDF) and Hamas. According to the latest report from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel displaced around 18 people in Gaza through evacuation orders between 23 and 142.000 March, including from the town of Rafah on the border with Egypt.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, at least 24 Palestinians were killed between March 6 and April 2025, 1.249. According to Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 60 percent of the Gaza Strip has become a “no-go zone” due to Israeli evacuation orders.
In addition, Israel has been blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza for a month. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently announced that it had had to close all of its bakeries due to a lack of supplies.
Hunger and death are everyday occurrences
Meanwhile, the Israeli General Authority for Palestinian Affairs (COGAT) said in a statement that more than 25.000 trucks carrying 450.000 tons of aid were delivered to Gaza during the ceasefire between January and March. This corresponds to about a third of the total aid delivered during the 15-month war.
Palestinian Mohammed al-Kurd told the Associated Press that he has to put his 12 children to bed without dinner. "We tell them to be patient and that we will buy flour tomorrow morning. We are lying to them and to ourselves."
Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip in response to a terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. At that time, fighters from Hamas and other militant Islamist groups killed about 1.150 people, kidnapped 251 people and took them to Gaza. To date, 59 hostages are still in the hands of their captors, of whom, according to data, only 24 people are still alive. Most of the others were released by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Several were freed by the IDF, while three hostages were mistakenly killed by Israeli soldiers.
According to Palestinian figures, more than 50.000 Palestinians – civilians and combatants – have been killed in the war so far. Although these numbers cannot be independently verified, international organizations such as the UN consider them credible.
"Hopeless on all sides"
Meanwhile, international aid agencies have warned that the humanitarian situation for some 2,3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate. The International Committee of the Red Cross said the renewed outbreak of hostilities and violence is leading to a "loss of hope on all sides."
"You don't even feel alive anymore," Ihab Suliman, a former university professor from Gaza, told the US news agency AP. "For us, life and death have become one and the same." Suliman has already fled inside Gaza eight times because of the conflict.
Nicholas Orr, a former British army deminer, told AFP that unexploded ordnance kills about two people a day. The majority of those killed are children searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings. “You pick something up and it explodes – along with you, your family and what’s left of the building,” Orr said of the situation in Gaza.
An artillery shell cost 15-year-old Ahmed Azam from Rafah the loss of his leg: “We were searching the remains of our house,” he told AFP. “I didn’t know what it was, but suddenly it exploded.” He suffered severe injuries to both legs, and one had to be amputated.
Netanyahu supports Trump's relocation plan
"There is no explicit explanation from Israel, but common sense dictates that humanitarian aid is being blocked to force people to flee," Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international relations at George Washington University, told DW.
“If you bomb an area, force the population of Gaza to constantly move from one place to another, and then deny them humanitarian aid, then what Israel calls a voluntary departure from Gaza seems much less voluntary,” says Prof. Braun.
On the social network X, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly spoke out for the first time in favor of US President Donald Trump's proposal to evacuate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip: "We will ensure general security in Gaza and enable the implementation of Trump's plan for voluntary migration."
In February, Trump announced that the United States would “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” a fashionable coastal area. Trump called on Arab neighbors, especially Egypt and Jordan, to take in the Palestinian population. The proposal was widely rejected, with the United Nations warning that it could be considered ethnic cleansing.
"What we see clearly from the statements of the Israeli political leadership, and even from the military plans, is that they are actually laying the foundations and beginning the process of eviction and depopulation of Gaza," Amjad Iraqi of the International Crisis Group, a global conflict prevention organization, told DW.
Much, he says, indicates that "Israel is essentially concerned with the collective punishment of the Palestinian population – both in Gaza and the West Bank."
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