In the months after Hamas fighters launched their assault of murder and abduction nearly two years ago, I often found myself alternating between despondence and incandescent anger in thinking about the Israeli and other hostages and their families. I’ve been close to several people who suffered abductions in their past. The worst thing is the uncertainty, the not knowing. Is the loved one still alive? Are they being abused, tortured? Will they ever come home? If they do come home, can they ever again live a normal life? The fears can be overwhelming. But while the hope of reunion may ebb over time, it never goes away unless the worst is verifiably confirmed.
Most of the 251 hostages Hamas abducted Oct. 7 have been repatriated dead or alive by their captors. The Israel Defense Force has also rescued some alive and retrieved others’ bodies. Of the 50 hostages still held, only 20 remain alive, according to Israeli government sources. At the end of the six-week ceasefire in March, which included a swap of hostages-for-Palestinian prisoners, 24 of the remaining hostages were then said to be still alive. Their families could celebrate the good fortune of those whose kin had been released still breathing, perhaps with renewed hope for their own relatives. But still they must wait in trepidation. Without another ceasefire, how many of those 20 will come home alive?
Trouble is, after weeks of ceasefire talks in Doha, the fundamental disagreement remains. Israel, backed by the United States, wants Hamas— whose backers are defanged — to surrender. Hamas wants to hang on to the shreds of power it still retains. So round and round they go. And where they stop … well, that’s the problem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the fascists serving on his war Cabinet, and President Donald Trump, don’t want it to stop. They are bent on ethnically cleansing Gaza. Each in their own way makes no bones about it. They are forthright about it. So the war goes on. With what means? To what end?
Cross-posted (and updated) from The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places
You can also catch me @meteorblades.bsky.social
As Amir Tibon at Haaretz writes:
Five months ago, in the first week of February, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a surprising ultimatum to Hamas: they must release all Israeli hostages, or Israel should "let all hell break out."
As of mid-2025, 26 Israeli citizens and five Thai citizens have been released. Yet five months after Trump's threat, 50 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza. Of these, 20 are believed to be alive, while 30 are presumed dead. All could have been returned to their families long ago if Israel had followed through on phase two of the Gaza ceasefire agreement signed in January 2025. […}
Under this deal, brokered by U.S. Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, Hamas was to release all remaining hostages at once, while Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza and officially end the war.
But instead of adhering to the terms, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to break it. Then, with support from Trump and Witkoff, he imposed new conditions of surrender on Hamas. Rather than trading all hostages for a permanent ceasefire, Netanyahu introduced a new plan: release some hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire, after which Israel could renew its war in Gaza. Hamas rejected this and insisted on fulfilling Witkoff's previous, signed outline.
This breakdown led to Netanyahu's decision in mid-March to restart the war in Gaza. More importantly, he also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid entering the enclave. For more than two months, as fighting escalated, Israel permitted no food, medicine, or other essential supplies into Gaza. This was the "hell" Trump had promised – an intensified war zone with severe shortages, with no relief for the wretched local population.
Answering a question last week about the U.S-Israeli-Hamas talks, Trump said Hamas "didn't really want to make a deal." That, of course, ignores the fact it was the Trump-backed Netanyahu decision to redo the January agreement that pushed Hamas to reject the new deal, giving the Israeli prime minister the excuse he needed to continue the slaughter.
BOUNCING THE RUBBLE
Gaza is flattened. Three of its major cities were already little more than ruins before the January-March ceasefire ended. Vast damage to infrastructure is everywhere. Most of Gaza’s hospitals and all of its universities are not operating. 60,000 or more Palestinians are dead. Israel says a third of them were combatants. The rest are mostly women and children. Nobody knows how many bodies remain to be counted beneath mountains of rubble.
The architects of Oct. 7 are also dead. Of the 15 members of Hamas’s politburo, only three have survived and they are abroad. Only two of the top Hamas military leaders are alive … somewhere. In Gaza itself, Hamas has, according to The Economist and other sources, ceased to govern. The clan gangs and looters that Hamas once suppressed are filling the gaps to nobody’s benefit but their own. And, following an old path of his, Netanyahu says he has armed the clans, some of which are now in daily skirmishes with Hamas. Hmmmmm. How did that work out, Bibi, when you sabotaged the Palestinian Authority’s attempt to govern Gaza as well as the West Bank by backing Hamas back in the day?
Worst of all, in Gaza, there’s little clean water, and not nearly enough food. There’s a reason for this. On July 24, Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, told us what it is in an editorial titled Israel Is Starving Gaza:
Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible. [...]
The famine that has been created is another facet of Israel's cruel inhumanity towards the people of Gaza. It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The famine does not contribute anything to the war effort against Hamas. Its gunmen will be the last to suffer hunger in Gaza. Before that, it will be children, women and Israeli hostages still captive there who starve.
The onus for Gaza's starvation lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is also shared by Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who both issues and enforces illegal orders.
Zamir should demand that the government allow the IDF to open all of Gaza's border crossings immediately, to allow unrestricted entry of food, medical supplies and aid workers to address the rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis.
He must also order the IDF to cooperate fully with the United Nations and other international aid organizations to facilitate the swift and secure delivery of assistance to Gaza's population.
Every day we wait, more children lose their lives.
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
According to Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), one in five Gaza children are malnourished. The World Health Organization has confirmed that at least 100 people have already died from starvation, 21 of them children under age 5.
After months of near silence on the subject, even legacy U.S. media in the past week presented a plethora of ghastly photos and told difficult-to-hear stories about Gazans starving. The United Nations and others have been reporting with increasing urgency on the dire situation. And on Sunday Trump added his criticism, noting that he had told Netanyahu that Palestinian kids “looked hungry.” The prime minister saw Israel was facing a public relations disaster. Consequently, a daily 10 a.m.-8 p.m. “tactical pause” in its military actions was declared for three Gaza cities. During these times, aid is being provided, some of which Israel, Jordan, the UAE, and Spain are delivering via airdrops.
Critics say this won’t resolve the unfolding disaster.
In a statement Sunday, Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead for the Occupied Palestinian territory, said: "Deadly airdrops and a trickle of trucks won't undo months of engineered starvation in Gaza. What's needed is the immediate opening of all crossings for full, unhindered, and safe aid delivery across all of Gaza and a permanent cease-fire. Anything less risks being little more than a tactical gesture."
On CNN Joe English, the emergency communications specialist for UNICEF, said these pauses present obstacles to effective treatment for malnutrition. "This is a short turnaround in terms of the notice that we have, and so we cannot work miracles,” he said. Malnourished children need substantial time to regain something close to normality, he added, and this would only be possible under a ceasefire. That would allow the United Nations to restore the hundreds of aid distribution stations it re-established during the January-March ceasefire.
U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher, interviewed by BBC Today on Monday, said the weekend aid deliveries were a “start” but just a “drop in the ocean” of what the civilian population needs. He added that the next few days “are really make or break,” and more aid must be delivered much more quickly. During the six-week ceasefire, Fletcher noted that 600-700 aid trucks had entered Gaza every day. On Sunday, according to Israeli authorities, just 120 trucks got in.
TRUMP WEIGHS IN
Meanwhile, The Jerusalem Post reported that it was pressure from senior Republican lawmakers and the White House that spurred Israel to allow more humanitarian assistance to flow into Gaza:
Members of the US Congress and Senate, described by Israeli sources as “close allies,” recently urged senior officials in Jerusalem to facilitate the entry of aid. “Help us help you,” they reportedly said. “We don’t believe the claims of widespread famine in Gaza, but you must take concrete steps to allow aid in.”
The message came from both senior Republican lawmakers in Congress and officials in the White House, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
In the most Trumpian way possible, the man occupying the Oval Office complained Sunday about supposed ungratefulness about U.S. aid and took another dig at the EU:
"We gave $60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza, and nobody acknowledged it. Nobody talks about it. And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that. And, you know, you have other countries not giving anything. None of the European countries, by the way, gave — I mean, nobody gave but us and nobody said, gee, thank you very much. And it would be nice to have at least a thank you."
Who exactly does he think should be expressing thanks? Netanyahu? The Palestinians who have had to dodge American-supplied bombs and IDF bullets to get to that food aid?
Not surprisingly, Trump ignored the €120 million the European Commission approved for Gaza aid in January, and the €450 million in aid it has provided since 2023.
But on Monday, in Turnberry, Scotland, at his golf resort, where he was meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump separated himself from Netanyahu’s assertion that allegations of starvation are a lie. “Some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake that,” Trump told reporters. He said the United States would work with its allies to distribute more aid. This would include setting up additional aid centers. He did not say how many. When the U.N. was still delivering aid, it had 400 centers set up in Gaza.
As usual with Trump, there’s some duplicity involved. Soon after lying the oath of office, he pulled U.S. support for UNRWA, which has been supplying aid to Palestinians for decades. Israel frequently asserts that Hamas systematically steals much U.N.-delivered aid. But The New York Times recently reported that was not the case. Two unnamed Israeli military officials said the U.N. aid delivery system had been “largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population,” according to reporter Natan Odenheimer. And claims that Hamas had infiltrated UNRWA were refuted by an USAID report.
In UNRWA’s place, Trump supported an Israeli-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The GHF uses U.S. security contractors and has been slammed for deadly incidents. At the four GHF stations set up for the whole of Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians seeking assistance have reportedly been killed by the IDF, GHF security or from being trampled in surges of desperate people.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen — the lead author of a letter urging a resumption of U.S. funding for UNRWA and other UN aid programs signed by 20 Senate Democrats — said of the situation: “American taxpayers should not be spending one penny to fund this private organization backed by mercenaries and by the IDF that has become a death trap.” He also called Trump’s and Israel’s claims that much of the U.N. aid has been systematically stolen by Hamas “a big lie.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who, like Holland, has been hammering away on U.S. and Israeli Gaza policy for months, said in a statement July 25:
After 21 months of brutal war, the Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza is entering a new and terrible phase. America and the world cannot continue to look away. We must reckon with what is being done with our taxpayer money, our weapons and the support of our government.
More than that, we must act to stop it. [...]
When mass death from starvation begins, it is difficult to reverse. Aid groups say Gaza faces a tidal wave of preventable death. This is the direct result of the Israeli government’s policies. From March 2 to May 19, Israel did not allow a single shipment of aid into Gaza — no food, water, fuel or medical supplies for a population of more than 2 million people. Israel has since allowed a trickle of aid to get in, but nowhere near enough to meet the enormous needs of a population starved for so long.
Earlier this week, 28 of our closest allies, including Britain, Japan and numerous European nations, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”
TWO ISRAELI HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION CALL WHAT’S HAPPENING “GENOCIDE”
Although several international and Palestinian groups have labeled Israel’s policy in Gaza “genocide,” Haaretz and The Guardian reported Monday that, for the first time, two Israeli human rights groups have added their voices to the allegation. B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights have a respected, decades-long history documenting systemic abuses. They say Israel’s allies have a legal and moral duty to stop the horrors happening in Gaza.
Said Yuli Novak, director of B’Tselem: “What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group. I think every human being has to ask himself: what do you do in the face of genocide?” He noted that “It couldn’t happen without the support of the western world. Any leader that is not doing whatever they can to stop it is part of this horror.”
“We don’t need to guess what Israel is doing and what the Israeli army is doing, because from the first day of this attack, Israeli leaders, the highest leadership, political leadership, including the prime minister, the minister of defence, the president of Israel said exactly that,” Novak said.
“They talked about human animals. They talked about the fact that there are no civilians in Gaza or that there is an entire nation responsible for 7 October.”
The PHR report focuses on the destruction of Gaza’s health system, something it says will have lingering effects for many years after the shooting is over.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide, noting that it has only been engaged in self-defense since the atrocities of Oct. 7. One argument, amplified disingenuously last week by Bret Stephens, a senior columnist at The New York Times, is that 60,000 deaths are “only” about 2.5% of the prewar population, supposedly too low for the campaign to be considered genocide.
That, Novak said, misinterprets the crime of genocide. The international Genocide Convention defines it as targeting a group “in whole or in part. It doesn’t mean that you need to kill each and every person.”
Shortly after taking office, Trump pulled U.S. support for UNRWA, which provided aid to Gaza with the support of the international community. Officials at the time claimed that Hamas had infiltrated the group and was financially benefiting from U.S. support — a claim refuted by a subsequent USAID report.
Instead, the Trump administration threw its support behind an Israeli-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses U.S. security contractors and has been heavily criticized for a number of recent incidents in which civilians have reportedly been killed while trying to reach its distribution sites.r
Mohammed R. Mhawish is a Gaza journalist in exile. He writes What It Feels Like to Starve:
Across Gaza, famine isn’t just in the empty kitchens. It’s in thinning arms, swollen bellies, and sunken cheeks everywhere. People walk doubled over from cramps. Children’s skin cracks from dehydration. Eyes lose their light. And above it all: the constant hum of drones, the sharp crack of artillery, the scream of jets.
I have known hunger—the gnawing emptiness, the dizziness, the body’s quiet ache. But what I witness now in Gaza is not hunger. It is starvation. Hunger is a feeling. Starvation is a weapon. Hunger makes you weak. Starvation is used to break you.
We are watching a people, my people, starved in real time. […]
The helplessness is a weight I carry across every hour. Because when you have survived starvation, you understand that what they are living now is not just a crisis—it’s a slow, deliberate crushing of life. And from here, all I can do is bear witness and refuse to let the world look away.
The Guardian editorializes:
Condemnation is rightly growing. On [July 21], the UK and 27 other countries issued a tough statement attacking Israel for depriving Palestinians of “human dignity”. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, called their assertion “disgusting”. But Israel’s other allies must keep working together. What matters is not what they say. It is what they do – including whether they impose sanctions and comprehensive arms embargos, and suspend preferential trade terms. Recognition of a Palestinian state is part of a necessary response, but not the only or most important issue. [...]
Faced with the systematic destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza, other states must together produce a systematic, comprehensive and concrete response. If not now, when? What more would it take to convince them? This is first and foremost a catastrophe for Palestinians. But if states continue to allow international humanitarian law to be shredded, the repercussions will be felt by many more around the world in years to come. History will not ask whether these governments did anything to stop genocide by an ally, but whether they did all they could.
Clearly, not all that could be done is being done. Meanwhile, the families of 20 hostages wait. And Gazans wonder if their starving children will ever be healthy again.
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