Hamas has accused Israel of attempting to starve Gaza’s 2.4 million people after the country said it would continue preventing aid from entering the territory.
“This is a public admission of committing a war crime, including the use of starvation as a weapon and the denial of basic necessities such as food, medicine, water and fuel to innocent civilians for the seventh consecutive week,” the Palestinian group said in a statement.
During an impasse over the future of the ceasefire, Israel halted the entry of aid on March 2, exacerbating the territory’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.
The Hamas accusation came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said yesterday that a rash of Israeli air strikes killed at least 40 people, most of them in encampments for displaced civilians, as Israel pressed its offensive in the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of the strikes, which came as Hamas officials reported that internal deliberations on the latest Israeli truce offer were nearly complete.
The military later announced it had carried out a strike in Jabaliya on what it said was a Hamas ‘command and control’ centre.
Israel said on Wednesday that it had converted 30 per cent of Gaza into a buffer zone in the widening offensive it resumed in March, ending a two-month ceasefire.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said this month that the military was leaving Gaza ‘smaller and more isolated’.
The United Nations said half a million Palestinians have been displaced since the offensive resumed, triggering what it has described as the most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began with Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The Israeli military said its air strikes had hit approximately 1,200 targets since March 18.
The leader of Qatar, which along with Egypt and the US helped mediate the January ceasefire deal, blamed Israel yesterday for its collapse.
“As you know, we reached an agreement months ago, but unfortunately Israel did not abide by this agreement,” said the Amir of Qatar Shaikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during a visit to Moscow.
Qatar would continue to ‘strive to bridge perspectives in order to reach an agreement that ends the suffering of the Palestinian people’, he added.
Acknowledging Qatar’s efforts, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the war in Gaza ‘a tragedy’, saying a long-term resolution was ‘connected to the establishment of two states’, Palestinian and Israeli.
In parallel to the Gaza offensive, Hamas said Israel had proposed a new 45-day ceasefire through mediators that would include the release of dozens of hostages.
The proposal also called for Hamas to disarm to secure a complete end to the war, a demand the group rejects.
Two Hamas officials said yesterday that internal discussions on the truce proposal were nearly complete, with one saying ‘the group will send its response to the mediators once they finish’.
Israel’s renewed assault has so far killed at least 1,691 people in Gaza, the health ministry there reported, bringing the overall toll since the war erupted to 51,065, most of them civilians.
Hamas’ Gaza chief said the group was ready to immediately negotiate a deal to swap all hostages for an agreed number of Palestinians jailed by Israel as part of a broader deal to end the war in the enclave.
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