Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Israel’s plan for the "conquest" of Gaza has sparked renewed fears, but for many of the Palestinian territory’s residents, the most immediate threat to their lives remains the spectre of famine amid a months-long Israeli blockade. The plan to expand military operations, approved by Israel’s security cabinet overnight, includes holding territories in the besieged Gaza Strip and moving the population south "for their protection," an Israeli official said.
However, Gaza residents told AFP that they did not expect the new offensive would make any significant changes to the already dire humanitarian situation in the small coastal territory. "Israel has not stopped the war, the killing, the bombing, the destruction, the siege, and the starvation — every day — so how can they talk about expanding military operations?" Awni Awad, 39, told AFP. Awad, who lives in a tent in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis after being displaced by Israeli evacuation orders, said that his situation was already "catastrophic and tragic."
"I call on the world to witness the famine that grows and spreads every day," he said. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in late April said it had depleted all its food stocks in Gaza due to Israel’s blockade on all supplies since March 2. "There is no food, no medicine, and no nutritional supplements. The markets are empty of food, and the government clinics and pharmacies have nothing," Umm Hashem Al-Saqqa, a Gaza City resident, lamented.
Moreover, Aya Al-Skafy, another resident of Gaza City, recounted the tragic death of her baby due to malnutrition and medicine shortages last week. "She was four months old and weighed 2.8 kilograms (6.2 pounds), which is very little. Medicine was not available," she said. "Due to severe malnutrition, she suffered from blood acidity, liver and kidney failure, and many other complications. Her hair and nails also fell out due to malnutrition."
Umm Hashem Al-Saqqa fears her five-year-old son might face a similar fate, but is powerless to do anything about it. "Hashem suffers from iron deficiency anaemia. He is constantly pale and lacks balance, and is unable to walk due to malnutrition," she told AFP. "There is no food, no medicine, and no nutritional supplements. The markets are empty of food, and the government clinics and pharmacies have nothing."
Mohammed Al-Shawa, 65, expressed skepticism about Israel’s new military roadmap, stating that it changes little as it already controls most of Gaza. "The Israeli announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza is just talk for the media, because the entire Gaza Strip is occupied, and there is no safe area in Gaza," he said. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 69 percent of Gaza has now been either incorporated into one of Israel’s buffer zones, or is subject to evacuation orders.
This number rises to 100 percent in the southern governorate of Rafah, where over 230,000 people lived before the war but which has now been entirely declared a no-go zone. "There is no food, no medicine, and the announcement of an aid distribution plan is just to distract the world and mislead global public opinion," Shawa said, referring to reports of a new Israeli plan for humanitarian aid delivery that has yet to be implemented. "The reality is that Israel is killing Palestinians in Gaza by bombing, shooting, or through starvation and denial of medical treatment," he asserted.
Israel claims that its renewed bombardments and the blockade of Gaza are aimed at forcing Hamas to release hostages held in the territory. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised the new plan for Gaza on May 5, 2025, and evoked a proposal previously floated by US President Donald Trump to displace the territory’s residents elsewhere. Smotrich said he would push for the plan’s completion, until "Hamas is defeated, Gaza is fully occupied, and Trump’s historical plan is implemented, with Gaza refugees resettled in other countries."
On the same day, US President Donald Trump announced that his administration would help get food to "starving" Gazans amid a two-month-and-counting Israeli aid blockade. "We’re going to help the people of Gaza get some food. People are starving, and we’re going to help them get some food," Trump told reporters during an event at the White House. However, Israeli officials have claimed that Gazans are not yet starving and that enough aid entered the Strip during a six-week ceasefire to sustain the Strip for an extended period of time, despite also arguing that Hamas has been stealing aid.
Data and testimony from inside the Strip indicate a worsening hunger crisis and rising rates of malnutrition, while Jerusalem works on implementing a new system to distribute aid in a manner that it hopes will prevent its diversion by Hamas. International aid organizations briefed on the initiative stated that they would not cooperate with it, as it does not properly address the humanitarian crisis.
Plans for a major offensive against Hamas, if no hostage deal is reached with the terror group by the end of Trump’s visit to the region next week, include moving the Palestinian civilian population toward the south of the Strip, attacking Hamas, and preventing the terror group from taking control of humanitarian aid supplies, a senior Israeli defense official said on May 5, 2025.
The official noted that the "blockade" on humanitarian aid entering would continue, and "only later, after the beginning of operational activity and a broad evacuation of the population to the south, a humanitarian plan will be implemented." This plan includes delineating an area in southern Gaza’s Rafah to be secured by the IDF as civilian companies hand out aid to Palestinian civilians.
According to a memo by COGAT, seen by the Associated Press, all aid will enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, on approximately 60 trucks daily, down from the 500 trucks that entered Gaza every day before the war. The memo stated that facial-recognition technology would be used to identify Palestinians at logistics hubs, and text message alerts would notify people in the area that they could collect aid.
After Israel announced its intention to assert greater control over aid distribution in Gaza, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs sent an email to aid groups, urging them to reject any "draconian restrictions on humanitarian work." The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) remarked that the plan is "fundamentally against humanitarian principles."
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, the only one to vote against the cabinet’s aid proposal, asserted that "the only aid that ought to enter Gaza should be for voluntary migration, to allow them to emigrate voluntarily." He emphasized that as long as hostages remain in captivity, "the enemy should not receive either food, electricity, or any other aid."
Since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, more than 52,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. The figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel claims to have killed around 20,000 combatants by January 2025. The Hamas-led massacre resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 people in southern Israel and 251 hostages, of whom 58 remain in Gaza.
