The United Nations declaration, for the first time, that famine conditions exist in Gaza complicates Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to end the war, while it helps Hamas to add demands in diplomatic negotiations.

Israel is rejecting a report by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as IPC, according to which level-five famine, the highest level of food scarcity, exists in Gaza “with reasonable evidence.” 

The IPC “has just published a ‘tailor-made’ fabricated report to fit Hamas’s fake campaign,” the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement posted on X. “Unbelievably, the IPC twisted its own rules and ignored its own criteria just to produce false accusations against Israel.”

According to the Israel Defense Forces, most of the data the report relied on are from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. The IPC, according to officials, changed its own criterion to fit the report, even as up to 100,000 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the start of the war. An additional recent “flood” of aid caused a sharp decline in food staple prices in the Strip, easing hunger there, they say.

“The laws of supply and demand don’t lie — the IPC does,” according to the Israeli foreign ministry. While Jerusalem rejects the report, Israel’s detractors seize on it as proof that the war in Gaza must end. It is published just as the IDF is making final preparations to enter Hamas’s most significant remaining stronghold at Gaza City. 

“Just when it seems there are no words left to describe the living hell in Gaza, a new one has been added: ‘famine,’” the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement. The Gaza famine, he adds, is “a man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself.” He urged “an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages, and full, unfettered humanitarian access,” and said the time to take those steps is “not tomorrow, it is now.” 

On Thursday Mr. Netanyahu visited the IDF’s Gaza Division that is amassing troops outside of the strip. Entering Gaza City, he said, represents the war’s “decisive stage.” 

The IDF is already acting, from the air and on the ground, in the southern and northeastern edges of Gaza City. The plan, approved Friday by the defense minister, Israel Katz, envisions the evacuation of non-combatants among the city’s 900,000 residents to the Strip’s southern area, before a final assault on Hamas fighters left behind. 

The civilians would be relocated to a tent city in southern Gaza, where they would be supplied with life necessities. IDF officials have alerted Gaza City hospitals and other institutions of the plan, urging them to prepare to move medical equipment and patients to the south.    

Even as those plans seem to get well on the way, Mr. Netanyahu said he has instructed his team “to begin immediate negotiations for the release of all our hostages and the end of the war, on conditions that are acceptable for Israel.” As of yet, no venue to such negotiations has been determined. 

For days the premier’s office has indicated that the military takeover of Gaza City might be suspended if negotiations on releasing all hostages conclude to Israel’s satisfaction. “Those two things, the defeat of Hamas and the release of all our hostages, go hand in hand,” Mr. Netanyahu said Thursday.

Jerusalem officials claim that the mere threat of a Gaza City takeover has already moved Hamas to accept a deal that it has rejected two months ago. Washington officials have blamed Hamas for the deadlock in negotiations. 

“The problem has always been that just when we think that things are ready to be resolved, Hamas changes the terms, they put new demands on the table, most of which become utterly unacceptable, and it all falls apart,” the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told Israel’s Arabic-language station Makan 33 on Friday. 

Hamas previously rejected a proposal made by President Trump’s special envoy, Steven Witkoff, which Israel accepted. It envisioned a two-month cease-fire, an increase in aid to Gaza, and the release of hundreds of terrorists in Israeli prisons in return for 10, or half, of the living Israeli hostages, and nearly 20 bodies of dead hostages.

This week, Hamas officials announced that they now accept an Egyptian proposal, which made mere cosmetic changes to the original Witkoff plan. Mr. Netanayhu, though, is yet to agree, and he now demands a new agreement, in which Hamas would release all remaining 50 hostages, dead and alive, and disarm. 

Mr. Netanyahu might rely on his confidence that pressure and the fear of losing its control over Gaza City would force Hamas to release the hostages. The IPC famine report is now bound to increase global pressure on Israel, and to stiffen Hamas’s negotiation stance.