It is well documented that Hamas steals international aid entering Gaza through pre-existing NGO and aid channels, then sell it to their people at vastly inflated prices. This ‘tax’ is an essential source of revenue for Hamas and enables them to continue to pay their fighters and those most loyal to the regime, thus prolonging the war. 

During the ceasefire, over 300,000 tonnes of food and aid entered Gaza, calculated enough to comfortably sustain the whole population until September 2025. Following the breakdown of the ceasefire in March, Israel prevented any new aid to enter, to cut off this source of funding to Hamas. This action was used by the terrorist group to claim a famine in the territory, despite the warehouses of food stocks available.

Following pressure from the international community, Israel agreed for aid to flow back into the territory, on the condition that systems were put in place to prevent Hamas theft and in adherence to international humanitarian law, the food was free for the people who needed it. 

When existing aid organisations were unable to comply, Israel and the USA established a new not-for-profit, the GHF, to establish the teams and mechanisms to achieve these objectives.  Recently, 130 charities and aid organisations penned a letter calling for the end of the GHF.  It has been reported that as part of the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, one Hamas condition is to return to the old aid delivery system, that profited them well in the past.

On Wednesday July 2, 2025, the Executive Chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Rev. Dr. Johnnie Moore gave the following statements in an interview:

• GHF has one job to do, and it’s to deliver free food to the people of Gaza. “We are not a political organisation. We have no other agenda”.
• GHF mission is to deliver as much food as possible. “Tens of thousands of boxes of food are delivered to Gaza every day, and now even twice a day in a single distribution”.
• GHF is a private US charity, so it doesn’t need to disclose its donors, “because we are a democracy”.
• “The real heroes of the operation are the local Gazan aid workers who work every single day to deliver food to the people.”
• “12 of which were mercilessly brutally murdered by Hamas in a targeted operation in the Gaza Strip, and not only did they murder these 12 aid workers, but they piled them in front of the hospital along with the injured and refused to allow them to even get medical care”.
• “There is an unbelievable effort around the world to try to shut down our operation. We will not be shut down”.
• GHF don’t exist to replace the UN aid but to subsidise, to collaborate with other aid organisations on problem-solving.
• There is a disinformation/misinformation campaign around GHF work. Hundred precent of the casualties attributed to GHF.
• “I am here in Brussels to correct some of the disinformation/misinformation around our efforts”.
• “I am here to be the voice of our aid workers who pay the ultimate price”.
• “I am here to be a bridge between the US and the European Union because GHF is a direct mandate of the President of the United States”.
• President Trump said that Hamas is treating the people of Gaza very badly by stealing their aid, and he said the US will do something about it.
• GHF is operating in a deadly environment.
• “This is an active war in one of the most condensed areas in the world and the most complex humanitarian environment in the world, we are operating in”.
• UNRWA failed to fulfil its mandate. One of the challenges of GHF, and plenty of countries in the European Union, not only the US, is collaborating with UNRWA.
• UNRWA never took seriously the concern of having Hamas infiltration in its operation.
• The curriculum of the schools of UNRWA, which is a UN charity, has appalling content which only contributes to hate in the Gaza Strip.
• The impetus of the UN against GHF (“which we think is slowly breaking”) is that aid would be distributed to Gaza only with UNRWA.
• The seeds of the plan go back to the Biden administration.
• Replying to the question: ‘Is there a mass hunger in the Gaza Strip?  And there are videos on social media of fully functioning restaurants in Gaza. How is Hamas able to coordinate this?”
• “There is mass food insecurity in Gaza, and in certain parts of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is still able to control food”.
• Addressing the dispute with the Swiss authorities: “As an American-led initiative, it’s important to have offices in other countries, like Switzerland”.
• “My Arab friends know the cost of religious extremism”.
• “I think this is a moment of conflict in an era of peace. The truth will prevail, and we are going to see a region which will become a place of peace”.
• “I have known President Trump for more than 14 years. No leader in the world is more capable of delivering peace than Trump, and our Arab Friends recognize it”.

What’s happened: Following yesterday’s statements from the Trump Administration that Israel had accepted its latest ceasefire proposal, reports in Arab media indicate that Hamas is positively inclined to the proposal as well, and will make a formal response by Friday. 

• The Saudi news outlet Asharq reports that Hamas is satisfied with the guarantees in the current proposal that the ceasefire would lead to an end to the war. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, speaking in Estonia,  told reporters “there are some positive signs” idicating that an agreement was imminent.
• On the ground, Sgt. Yaniv Michalovich, 19, from Rehovot, was killed in combat yesterday in the Gaza Strip. Two other soldiers sustained serious injuries in the same incident.
• The IDF says that it killed the two Hamas militants who carried out an attack on an Israeli APC last week. The Hamas operatives were killed in a drone strike. The attacks they carried out last week killed seven soldiers from the 605th Combat Engineering Battalion.
• Hamas launched two rockets from Gaza to Sderot yesterday. In the evening following the rocket launch, the IDF issued an evacuation order for the neighbourhood from which the rockets were launched. As of this morning, it was engaged in an extensive operation there against the terror cell that launched the rockets.
• Investigations into Qatari influence in the Prime Minister’s Office expanded yesterday with the questioning under caution of Major General (res.) Yoav Mordechai, who has held a number of senior roles and, since retiring from service, has been employed by the Israeli firm Novard Group, which has reportedly represented Israeli defence contractors in their dealings with Qatar. According to the allegations under investigation, Novard Group was involved in transferring payments to Jonatan Urich, the senior adviser to the Prime Minister at the centre of the suspected influence ring.

Context: The full details of the latest deal remain unclear. With Prime Minister Netanyahu meeting President Trump next week in Washington it is also unclear the sequencing of when the Israeli cabinet will vote to approve a deal. 

• Details of the proposed ceasefire reported this morning by The New York Times suggest some differences from earlier reports. In the new version, ten living hostages and eighteen bodies would be released on five different occasions during the 60 days of the ceasefire. Moreover, unlike in the previous ceasefire, there would be no handover “ceremonies.” These staged spectacles provoked much anger and anguish in Israel, in particular regarding the Red Cross’s collaboration with them.
• Hamas is currently holding 50 Israeli hostages, of whom 20 are believed to be alive. Hamas’ apparent agreement to the new proposal, still unconfirmed, is conditioned on assurances that the ceasefire period will see negotiations to end the war permanently, the only condition under which the terror organisation will agree to release the remaining hostages it will still be holding at the end of the 60 days of the ceasefire.
• Officially and publicly, Israel is still committed to both of its stated war goals: liberating the hostages and ending Hamas rule in Gaza. Speaking to soldiers in Rafah yesterday, Defence Minister Yisrael Katz said, “Getting the hostages and making sure Hamas isn’t here. We won’t let go of that objective. Hamas has not changed.”
• National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called on Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to meet him urgently to coordinate opposition to the ceasefire deal. Both far-right ministers have in the past opposed any proposals that leave Hamas standing in any form. During the previous ceasefire in January, Ben Gvir resigned from the Government, only to rejoin when fighting started again in March.
• In previous rounds, the government had enough votes to approve deals without the hard right factions. Nevertheless, leading figures in the parliamentary opposition made public declarations of support for the ceasefire and pledged to provide the Government with a “safety net” in the Knesset for it to pursue the release of hostages even in the face of far-right defections inside the coalition. Leader of the Opposition Yair Lapid said that “compared to Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s 13 votes, you have my 23 votes for a safety net for a hostage deal. They all need to be brought back home now.” 
• The Democrats Chairman and Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan said, “The pair of failed Kahanists, who have formed a blocking majority against getting the hostages back, are un-Zionist and unworthy of sitting at the cabinet table. And the person who has kept them there is unfit to lead Israel for even a single day longer.” And Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity Party, posted on social media: “No bloc on earth will stop the return of the hostages. Netanyahu, petty politics won’t be an obstacle to historic steps. You have a large majority to bring back the hostages.”

Looking ahead: Netanyahu is due to arrive in Washington on Sunday, with expectations that a ceasefire agreement, if possible, it to be agreed upon before his arrival. In Washington, he is expected to discuss with Trump a number of other regional initiatives that a ceasefire, as well as the successful war in Iran earlier this month, will have made possible.

• According to a detailed report in Israel Hayom, a US-brokered normalisation agreement with Saudi Arabia is back on the agenda. Efforts to bring about a full diplomatic normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel were at a mature state before the October 7 attack, and were probably a principal reason for the attack, but since the war began the Saudis have been less interested in pursuing a peace deal with Israel. The coordinated US and Israeli attack on Iran has, according to the report, convinced the Saudis of the importance of formalising their relationship with Israel. 
• A ceasefire that would lead to an actual end to the war could be an opening for Saudi and Emirati investment in Gaza’s reconstruction – and an opportunity to shut out the Qataris, strategic rivals of the Saudis and Emiratis and until October 7 the main financial backers of Gaza’s Hamas rulers. The paper also reports for the first time that Saudi forces were directly involved in intercepting Iranian drones launched at Israel in the recent war.
• Syrian state media, meanwhile, were keen to dampen enthusiasm on a potential peace deal with Israel yesterday. A report on the state TV channel citing an unnamed senior official described such talk as “premature.” The same report reiterated the key Syrian demand of an Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in recent months beyond the 1974 disengagement lines. Notably, there was, once more, no demand for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel conquered in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Gaza Strip: Seven IDF soldiers were killed in action on Tuesday in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip when their Puma armoured combat engineering vehicle was hit by an explosive. 

• All seven served in the 605th Combat Engineering Battalion. The soldiers were named as Lt. Matan Shai Yashinovski, 21, from Kfar Yona; Staff Sgt. Ronel Ben-Moshe, 20, from Rehovot; Staff Sgt. Niv Radia, 20, from Elyakhin; Sgt. Ronen Shapiro, 19, from Mazkeret Batya; Sgt. Shahar Manoav, 21, from Ashkelon; Sgt. Maayan Baruch Pearlstein, 20, from Eshhar; and Staff Sgt. Alon Davidov, 21, from Kiryat Yam. 
• 879 IDF soldiers have been killed in the war which began on October 7, 2023. 440 of them since Israel began its operation in response to the massacre. 
• In a separate incident, another soldier from the same battalion sustained serious injuries.

Israel – Iran ceasefire: A comprehensive ceasefire put an end to twelve days of active combat between Israel and Iran yesterday. 

• The hours immediately before and after the ceasefire saw increased attacks from both sides and doubts about the efficacy of the ceasefire, but by midday yesterday all active combat had ceased.
• The ceasefire was due to go into effect at 7:00am Israel time. In the hours leading up to the deadline, Israel mounted a large offensive air operation in Iran, to the apparent surprise and displeasure of the Trump administration.
• In the last hour before the ceasefire went into effect, Iran launched four separate missile barrages at Israeli cities. A missile struck an apartment block in Beer Sheva in southern Israel, killing four people. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Israel during the entire 12 days of war.
• Hours after the ceasefire had gone into effect, a new Iranian missile attack was aimed at Haifa. Anger in Israel, both at the deadly Beer Sheva attack and the ceasefire violation in Haifa, led the Israeli government to order a new aerial attack on Iran.
• The Trump administration exerted public and private pressure on Israel to abort this attack, with Trump making colourful and direct statements on social media and on the White House lawn, as well as holding a phone call with the Israeli prime minister, who ultimately called off most of the planned attack and made do with a symbolic attack on an Iranian radar facility.
• With that final blow, the ceasefire entered into full force, and has held so far for more than 20 hours.

Context: With the war seemingly over for now, the rhetorical battle over its outcome began. 

• A low-confidence preliminary assessment by the US Defence Intelligence Agency that Iran’s nuclear programme was set back only by a few months was seized upon by sceptics of military action in Iran as proof of its lack of efficacy, commanding banner headlines in the New York Times and elsewhere. 
• Both the US and Israel have yet to make more detailed assessments of the damage to Iranian nuclear sites, as well as to Iran’s existing stock of ballistic missiles and its capacity to make more.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to the Israeli public yesterday, saying “we destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme, and if anyone in Iran tries to revive that project, we will act with the same resoluteness and the same force to cut short any attempt of that kind. I reiterate: Iran will not have nuclear weapons.”
• President Trump released what appear to be screenshots of private correspondence between him and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, a former Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Rutte welcomes Trump to the NATO conference in the Hague, saying that he was “flying into another big success in The Hague this evening.” Elsewhere in the text exchange, Rutte wrote to Trump, “That was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do… It makes us all safer.”
• Writing in Yediot Ahronot, Ronen Bergman focussed on the ballistic missile threat: “Iran fired – and the IAF intercepted – roughly half of the ballistic missiles that Iran possessed prior to the Israeli attack. That is to say, they still have about 1,000 missiles. That means that another roughly 1,000 missiles remain. Israel is estimated to have destroyed about 200 of Iran’s 400 launchers and to have disrupted Iran’s efforts to dramatically expand its missile production, having aimed to produce about 10,000 missiles over the next five years. But do the remaining missiles, launchers and production infrastructure still pose a threat?”
• Elsewhere in Israel, attention turned back to the war in Gaza and the plight of the remaining hostages. Speculation abounded that the Israeli government could leverage its success in Iran to reach a more comprehensive ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza — and even ride that to an early election. In Maariv, Ben Caspit appealed to Netanyahu to resist the entreaties of his far-right cabinet ministers to continue the war in Gaza and instead to agree to end the war now. He likened this to Trump’s decision to attack Iran, disappointing his far-right supporters who preferred a more isolationist stance. “Netanyahu, be Trump,” he wrote. “Learn from the unpredictable American president who went against his base… and made the right decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities… Because sometimes you simply need to do the right thing. Trump did it. If Trump could do it, so can you. You need to put an end, here and now, to the needless war in Gaza.”

Looking ahead: Polling in Israel shows a minor increase in the personal popularity of Benjamin Netanyahu, but no dramatic shift in voting preferences for Knesset. 

• In the first poll taken since the ceasefire in the war with Iran, Netanyahu’s Likud party  saw its projected seat count rise to 26 from 22 in previous polls, but the gain was entirely at the expense of other right-wing parties. The current governing coalition, which holds 68 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, received only 49 seats in the latest poll, far short of a majority. 
• The next election is due to be held in October 2026, but recent weeks have seen much speculation that an early election might be called. Reasons for this include the impasse over drafting ultra-Orthodox men and high expectations among Netanyahu’s supporters that the successful end of the war with Iran could boost his popularity.

What’s happened: A bus carrying Palestinian aid workers to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site was attacked by Hamas gunmen. Five of the Palestinian workers were killed in the attack, and there are unverified reports of a possible abduction as well. 

• On Wednesday, the GHF announced that it had provided nearly 2.5 million meals that day, and more than 16 million meals to Gazans since it began operations two weeks ago.
• The bodies of two Israeli hostages abducted in the October 7 attacks were recovered by Israeli forces yesterday. Both were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 47 people were murdered and 76 taken hostage during the massacre. The kibbutz had 427 residents when it was attacked by 500 Palestinians from Gaza.
• The identity of one of the two murdered hostages was not yet cleared for publication at the request of his family. The other was Yair Yaakov, a resident of the kibbutz who was 59 years old when he was murdered during the October 7 massacre.
• Yaakov’s partner, Meirav Tal, and his two sons, Or and Yagil, were abducted and later released in November 2024 as part of the temporary ceasefire deal.
• There are currently 53 hostages still being held in Gaza, of whom 20 are estimated to be alive. The bodies of the two hostages were found yesterday in Khan Yunis when an IDF force operating in the area came upon a tunnel entrance and physical evidence that hostages had been held nearby.