Lazar Berman
Times of Israel, July 28, 2025
“Israel needs to manage the humanitarian effort in a proactive fashion,” instead of hastily announcing new policies in crisis mode.”
A year and a half later, Israel is still making the same mistakes over humanitarian aid in Gaza.
In the confused days after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders took to the microphones to boast about how vigorously they would block aid into the Gaza Strip.
Two days after the horror, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
That quickly proved unrealistic. Less than two weeks into the war, the siege was lifted, and the first aid trucks bearing food and medicine crossed in from Egypt.
By mid-November, pressure from the US and international organizations pushed Israel to reverse course on fuel as well, and trucks started to bring in fuel tanks for hospitals, aid trucks, water pumps, desalination plants, bakeries and sewage plants.
Fuel would also go to the Paltel telecom company so that Gazans could have phone and internet service.
Israel also promised that no aid would come in through the Kerem Shalom crossing or Ashdod Port, as if the route through which the aid traveled made some difference to the outcome of the war.
Predictably, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relented under US pressure on Kerem Shalom in December 2023, then allowed a massive shipment of aid to go through Ashdod Port the next month. ….SOURCE.