LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced new details for his country's expanded incursion into Gaza. He says Israeli troops are taking over more land in the Palestinian territory. According to Gaza health officials, the Israeli military has killed more than a thousand Palestinians since Israel ended a ceasefire with Hamas last month. To break down the details of this expanded incursion, we're joined by NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Tel Aviv. Good morning, Hadeel.
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So what is Israel saying it's going to do?
AL-SHALCHI: Well, all this week, Israel's defense minister has made it clear that Israeli troops are planning on seizing more and more land in Gaza and then adding it to a buffer zone with Israel. Then in a video statement last night, Netanyahu announced this third security corridor in Gaza. So in the past month, troops occupied a zone that cuts across Gaza's north. Troops already occupy a strip of land on Gaza's southern border with Egypt. So if this happens, it'll be an additional strip of land between those two, cutting across Gaza. Here's Netanyahu on his new plan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: He said "we are cutting up the strip. We are increasing the pressure step by step so that Hamas returns the hostages." Also, Israel, we know, has been talking about permanently displacing Palestinians from Gaza.
FADEL: And what does Israel want Hamas to agree to?
AL-SHALCHI: Well, Israel proposed last weekend for Hamas to release 11 hostages, including an American Israeli dual national. That's about half of the living hostages still held in Gaza. It also wants Hamas to disarm. If Hamas agrees to this, Israel says there will be a 40-day ceasefire and then discussions to permanently end the war. But then yesterday, senior Hamas official Basem Naim told NPR that Hamas is rejecting this proposal, calling it, quote, "unacceptable." Hamas says it wants to go straight into talks about an end to the war. Israel says this is a strategy to twist Hamas' arm to agree to a deal that'll see more hostages come back home. But Israel's pressure campaign is working on a few different levels, you know, not just bisecting Gaza but also ordering Palestinians to leave their shelters and blocking all aid. It's been blocked for a month now.
FADEL: So a month without aid. What has that meant for Palestinians in Gaza?
AL-SHALCHI: Well, first, there's been this massive evacuation order this week to empty out 97% of the greater Rafah area in the south. The U.N. says now a hundred thousand Palestinians there are displaced. Um Mohamed Abdullah (ph) is one of them.
UM MOHAMED ABDULLAH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: You know, she said "we have to count our daughters when we move. Are there three, four or five? Is one of them missing? Did we lose a girl on the way?" And then just today, another evacuation order was announced around Gaza City in the north.
And then there's the aid. This has been the longest time Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza since the beginning of the war. That means no food, no medical supplies, no fuel that's needed to power things like health facilities. So Israel says there was a surge of aid during the first phase of the ceasefire, so Gaza still has enough food. But then aid groups are saying food is quickly running out. The World Food Programme shut down all of its 25 bakeries in Gaza because they say they've run out of flour and fuel. It told us it only has two weeks' worth of food supplies. It's distributing them to charity kitchens, and most Palestinians depend on those kitchens for their one meal a day.
FADEL: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi. Thank you, Hadeel.
AL-SHALCHI: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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