With world pressure on Israel reaching new heights due to reports of food shortages in Gaza, Hamas is amassing new demands in negotiations over a cease-fire and the return of some of the 50 remaining hostages it has held since October 7, 2023. Exasperated officials at Jerusalem and Washington are now seeking “alternatives” to negotiating with the terror group. 

Following widespread international and Israeli press reports on a lack of food in the Strip, Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly instructed the Israel Defense Force on Thursday to “saturate Gaza with foodstuffs.” His office also announced that after 18 days of haggling at Doha over an American-proposed deal for a two-month cease-fire, the Israeli negotiation team there would return to Jerusalem for consultations.

The decision was made after Hamas officials detailed a counterproposal that included new demands regarding the initial proposal to which Israel had already agreed.

“The global hunger campaign is empowering Hamas,” the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs’s Yossi Kuperwasser tells the Sun. “The irony is that everyone knows what’s going on, and they all play along. There’s enough food in Hamas’s warehouses to feed everybody in Gaza, but when everybody shows pictures of staved children, Hamas will raise new demands.”

America also seems to have given up on the Doha negotiations. Hamas “clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a cease-fire in Gaza,” President Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff, said in a statement Thursday. “While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith.” He added that Washington will now seek “alternative” ways to free the hostages and allay suffering in Gaza.   

Yet, pressure on Israel is growing. President Macron on Thursday vowed to recognize a Palestinian state during the upcoming United Nations gathering in September. He is not expected to attend a meeting there next week; Paris originally planned to recognize “Palestine” during that meeting. The “urgency today is to end the war in Gaza,” he reasoned.

Hamas, though, refuses to make concessions to end that war. One of its new demands is the release of nearly 2,000 terrorists in Israeli prisons, including hostage takers, in return for releasing 10 living hostages and several bodies of dead ones. Israel says it cannot agree. “What we want from Hamas, they don’t feel they need to give us,” Mr. Kuperwasser, a former senior IDF intelligence officer, says.  

Another Hamas demand is to shut down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli- and American-backed food distribution mechanism. Instead, it says only the United Nations must distribute aid. The UN agrees.  

“In Gaza, malnutrition is soaring,” the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said Thursday. “Starvation is at the door. UN facilities have been struck despite their coordinates being shared. The UN system is being denied space, safety, and the conditions to save lives.”  

The Israel Defense Force organized a tour on Thursday, showing reporters an array of aid trucks that Israel has approved for distribution but remain idle on the Gaza side of the border, awaiting UN distribution. 

“Here are photos of UN trucks & enough food to feed all of Gaza but it sits rotting!” the American ambassador to Jeruslaem, Mike Huckabee, writes on X. The UN “is a tool of Hamas! US based GHF is actually delivering food FOR FREE and SAFELY. UN food is either looted by Hamas or rots in the sun!”

The GHF is operating in the south of the Strip, in areas mostly controlled by the IDF, while the UN’s distribution is in Gaza City and other areas where Hamas remains entrenched, and where scenes of hunger are more prevalent. Food prices have been rising sharply there in recent weeks.

Much of the UN aid operation is headquartered at Khan Yunis, where the IDF refrained from operating until last week. According to a study by Hebrew University’s Yannai Spitzer, the price of flour at Khan Yunis in May was 3,584 percent higher than in the week before the onset of the October 7  war. That is even though all the aid that enters Gaza from outside is financed by Israel and donor countries for distribution free of charge. 

On Thursday a Hamas rocket was launched from Khan Yunis at a GHF distribution center, where more than 90 million meals have been handed out since May. Lack of safety at the food sites is widely condemned, even though UN distribution is also plagued by scenes of violence. 

“The Israeli aid system is inhumane, ineffective, dangerous, and fueling instability,” the British UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told the Security Council Wednesday. “Reports and images this week of children dying from starvation are beyond horrific. The IDF is shooting at desperate Palestinian civilians on an almost daily basis. Hamas is exploiting this disorder.”

A group of 25 Western countries and the European Union condemned Israel on Monday. “The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” they said in a joint statement that criticized “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.” 

Hamas “is good at utilizing its weakness to get the world to pressure Israel,” Mr. Kuperwasser says.