Israeli limits aid to devastated Gaza, as Trump, Ben-Gvir issue new warnings to Hamas

Israel said Wednesday it is restricting emergency aid from being allowed into Gaza due to the slow release of captive bodies, as US President Donald Trump issued a stark new warning to Hamas.

Hamas on Tuesday handed over four more bodies of Israeli captives to the Red Cross, according to the terms of the ceasefire agreement. The latest exchange takes the number of released deceased captives to eight; however, around 20 more bodies remain somewhere in the enclave.

The body of one captive returned to Israel from Gaza on Tuesday belonged to a soldier named Tamir Nimrodi. His family released a statement stating that his cause of death was an Israeli strike, despite an earlier statement from them to Israeli media, stating he was "murdered" in Hamas captivity.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), only 137 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the deal was agreed, significantly lower than the amount needed to sustain the population.

Israel informed the UN that it will only allow 300 aid trucks to enter Gaza, half the agreed number, and that no fuel or gas will be allowed in except in exceptional humanitarian circumstances.

Palestinians, meanwhile, have been forced to use their bare hands to sift through rubble for bodies, due to a lack of excavation equipment.

Egyptian specialists, advised by an Israeli technical team, are currently working in Gaza to locate the bodies of the deceased Israeli captives, Al Araby Al Jadeed, The New Arab’s Arabic language site reported.

Israeli officials had threatened to delay the opening of the Rafah land crossing, a vital route for the entry of aid, in what is seen as collective punishment against Gaza's 2.3 million inhabitants who are on the brink of famine.

Israeli media reported that the decision was reversed after Hamas returned the bodies of the captives on Tuesday evening, and promised they would return more on Wednesday.

Doctors blocked from entering Gaza

Health services and infrastructure in Gaza are on the brink of total collapse, while civilians are in desperate need of food, baby formula, and medicine.

Palestinian medics in Gaza have also raised concerns that Israel is continuing to block doctors from entering the besieged enclave, to deal with the injured as well as the rising numbers of sick and starving.

Dr Ahmed Mokhallati, the former head of plastic surgery at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, told Al Jazeera: "Israel is still controlling the borders, with very minimal access to everything in Gaza.

"People don’t notice that nothing has changed on the ground. We still have the famine... there is no electricity, no water, no petrol, no food supplies, no medicines."

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump signalled that the second phase of the ceasefire deal had now begun, despite Israeli killings continuing.

Early on Tuesday, Israeli tanks opened fire in Gaza City, a day after nine Palestinians were killed in the enclave on Tuesday, with two of them succumbing from their wounds following earlier Israeli attacks.

Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had lashed out at Hamas, saying that they must be "erased from the earth", despite the group being part of a truce deal with Israel.

Trump also had a message to Hamas: "If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. And it will happen quickly and perhaps violently."

This brings into question the future of the ceasefire once Hamas hands over the captives' bodies, with fears Gaza could be targeted again in another genocidal war.

Israeli bombardment in Gaza has destroyed around 80 percent of the enclave since October 2023, with new satellite imagery showing much of the landscape as having been turned into wasteland.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 67,000 Palestinians since October 2023, while scores more are still trapped under the rubble. The war has been determined to be a genocide by the leading rights group Amnesty International.