Politics USA and Israel want to deliver Gaza aid past Hamas
In view of the catastrophic emergency situation in the Gaza Strip, the USA and Israel want to bypass the Islamist Hamas and deliver their humanitarian aid to the sealed-off coastal area.
03.05.2025, 06:11
SDA
Although the situation for the civilian population is already extremely difficult due to a lack of food and medicine as well as the heavy Israeli attacks, the security cabinet wants to decide on Sunday on a possible expansion of the offensive against Hamas, according to media reports. In neighboring Syria, there have been new attacks by the Israeli air force - according to human rights activists, the most violent since the beginning of the year.
An agreement between the USA, Israel and a new international foundation for the distribution of aid in the densely populated Gaza Strip is close to being finalized, according to a report by the news portal "Axios". According to the report, a private US company is to organize the distribution at several stations within the largely destroyed coastal area and ensure security. According to the report, Palestinian families will receive a food parcel once a week.
Israel's military has been blocking aid for months
For around two months, the Israeli military has not allowed any aid supplies into the sealed-off strip of land. The armed forces accuse the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas of selling the aid supplies to the suffering population at inflated prices and using the proceeds to pay their fighters and weapons. Aid organizations recently warned that their food reserves in the Gaza Strip were running low.
"We have to be good to Gaza. The people there are suffering. There is a great need for food and medicine, and we are taking care of it," said US President Donald Trump recently after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Critics, however, accuse the Israeli leadership of having caused this acute shortage in the first place through its conduct of the war.
Many deaths reported in Israeli airstrikes
According to Palestinian reports, several people were again killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. Ten victims alone - including minors - were reported when the home of a family in Al-Bureij in the center of the area was hit, according to staff at the nearby Al-Aksa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Another six Palestinians were also killed in an Israeli attack on a soup kitchen in the city of Gaza, according to medical circles. The information could not initially be verified.
At the planned meeting of the Israeli security cabinet on Sunday, a decision is to be made on a possible expansion of the military offensive and the mobilization of several reserve brigades, the news portal "walla.co.il" reported. Israel wants to use the attacks to put additional pressure on Hamas so that the Islamists release more hostages.
Israeli air force attacks military positions in Syria
In view of the ongoing fighting between members of the Druze minority and pro-government militias in Syria, the Israeli armed forces also attacked several military positions in the neighboring country. They attacked a military facility, anti-aircraft guns and missile positions in Syria, according to the army. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the airstrikes were the heaviest Israeli attack since the beginning of the year.
According to the Observatory, more than 20 airstrikes hit targets in the area surrounding the capital Damascus, a missile site in the Daraa administrative district in the south-west of the country and an air defense unit in Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. This means that 79 targets have now been destroyed in 52 Israeli attacks in Syria since the beginning of the year.
More than 100 people were recently killed in fierce clashes between Sunni militias and Druze gunmen. The Druze are a religious minority whose members live mainly in Syria, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. In Israel, many of them serve voluntarily in the army - the Jewish state sees them as allies.
