Netanyahu: If Israel Intended Starvation, All Gazans Would Be Dead

During his presentation to the foreign press today (Sunday), Prime Minister Netanyahu explained the humanitarian situation in Gaza from Israel's perspective and in terms of his intended future policy:

"We will do so by first enabling the civilian population to safely leave the combat areas to designated safe zones. In these safe zones they will be given ample food, water and medical care, as we have done before. And again, contrary to false claims, our policy throughout the war has been to prevent a humanitarian crisis, while Hamas’s policy has been to create it.

"Since the beginning of the war, Israel has let in close to 2 million tons of aid! I know of no other army that has enabled such aid to go to the civilian population in enemy territory.

"Now, if we had a starvation policy, no one in Gaza would have survived after two years of war. But our policy has been the exact opposite. We’ve let in, as I said, almost 2 million tons of aid and sent millions of text messages, millions of phone calls, to Gazans to get out of harm’s way.

"Yet in the last few months, Hamas has violently looted the aid trucks meant to get to Palestinian civilians. They deliberately created a shortage of supply. And the UN consistently refused, until recently, to distribute the thousands of trucks that we let into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

"So, the problem is, we've had tons of uncollected food rotting on the Gazan side of the border because the UN was, and still is, unwilling to deliver all of it. Here are the tons and tons and tons of humanitarian aid that Israel led in to the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom Crossing, just sitting there, because it's not distributed.

"So now, we are going to go around this obstacle, we are going around it, by doing these three things:

1. Designating safe corridors for humanitarian aid distribution – (that's showing the problem. Not showing the solution, but here it is). First, designating rather safe corridors for aid distribution. You can go, you can drive trucks there, and you'll be safe.

2. Increasing the number of safe distribution points managed by the Gazan Humanitarian Foundations.

3. Air drops. That's air drops done by the Israeli Air Force and we're inviting others to join us.

"The result has been a humanitarian surge, which we are coordinating with President Trump and his team, and hundreds of trucks have gone in, in recent days. This is preventing hunger. But it's not prevented the global campaign of lies that we have all witnessed.

"So in Gaza, despite Hamas’s obstacles, two million people are now getting access to humanitarian aid."