Menu

Jewish Federations of North America 8.7.25

War in Israel: Update on Current Situation

August 7, 2025 - October 7 War, Day 671, 50 hostages remain in captivity

As Israel works to increase the amount of aid reaching Gaza substantially, the Cabinet is meeting to discuss a program to conquer and reoccupy Gaza.

Humanitarian Situation in Gaza

  • Israel, together with segments of the international community, continues to make major efforts to ease the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
  • Overnight, US President Trump announced that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (a private American initiative backed by the US and Israeli governments) will dramatically increase the number of its aid distribution centers from four to sixteen. The organization currently delivers around two million Halal-certified meals daily. The UN has declined to participate, and Hamas has opposed the initiative.
  • In addition, $1 billion in new funding, partly American, will be provided for aid to the Strip’s civilians.
  • Approximately 200 aid trucks have been entering Gaza daily, though hundreds remain stalled on the Gaza side of the border awaiting UN pickup and distribution.
  • Israel has maintained daily humanitarian pauses from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. It has also designated secure routes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. to facilitate the delivery of aid. These measures are expected to remain in place indefinitely.
  • Airdrops of supplies have also continued, with 110 aid packages dropped yesterday by six different countries. Since the beginning of airdrop operations, a total of 785 aid packages have been delivered, each containing hundreds of kilograms of food. These include flour, sugar, and canned food from Israel, Jordan, the UAE, Canada, Germany, France, and other countries.
  • Between July 20 and August 3, at least 12,000 tons of food items—including bulk supplies for community kitchens—entered Gaza through UN-coordinated mechanisms. However, over 90% of these were looted or offloaded by crowds or armed groups. Since May 19, 2,010 aid trucks entered Gaza, but 1,753 (87%) were intercepted either peacefully by civilians or forcefully by armed actors. This diverted 23,353 tons of aid.
  • The UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said on July 29 (before Israel significantly stepped up its efforts) that 81% of households in Gaza were reporting poor food consumption, and 24% were experiencing significant shortages.
  • Israel disputes claims of mass starvation, citing manipulated imagery and politically motivated narratives. The Prime Minister’s Office emphasized that Hamas benefits from portraying a humanitarian crisis to pressure Israel into a ceasefire without releasing hostages.
  • The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, welcomed Israel’s humanitarian pauses and called for increased aid volumes to prevent famine. He acknowledged the logistical challenges and emphasized the need for safe and predictable access to the food.

Gaza's Future

  • The Israeli media has reported that US President Donald Trump is planning to give a speech in which he proposes the rehabilitation of Gaza under American leadership with significant U.S. funding—but only if Hamas is no longer in power. Since all other ideas have failed, the Administration now reportedly wants to send a blunt message to Gaza’s civilian population that the only thing standing between them and the rehabilitation of the Strip is Hamas.
  • One US official noted earlier in the week that Israel and the US have both agreed to push for an all-encompassing deal instead of a partial ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
  • Today, Israel’s Cabinet is meeting to discuss the future of Gaza and the war. Following Hamas’s withdrawal from ceasefire talks and its refusal to reach a deal with the Jewish state, Israel’s government will discuss the possibility of reoccupying Gaza.
    • Prime Minister Netanyahu has been speaking about conquering the entire Gaza Strip to rid it of Hamas completely. The implication of such a decision, if reached, would be to instruct the IDF to enter areas in the Gaza Strip where it has not previously operated (or has only been present in a low-profile manner), including the major refugee camps in central Gaza and Gaza City.
    • One of the reasons that the IDF has not operated in these densely-populated areas has been that the remaining hostages are likely held in those areas. The fear is that if IDF troops are active in the vicinity of a place where hostages are held, the captives would likely be executed.
    • According to Israeli media, the IDF’s Chief of the General Staff LT. Gen. Eyal Zamir is reluctant to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, saying that it is not the IDF's role to rule over two million Palestinians and take care of their daily needs. Zamir also noted that operating with full force in those areas will endanger the remaining hostages, as well as the IDF soldiers fighting there. 
    • It remains unclear whether the Cabinet will vote to proceed to occupy the entirety of the Gaza Strip, or will begin by occupying a smaller area. Some commentators suggest that these threats are a negotiating strategy aimed at coaxing Hamas to reach a deal.
    • The thinking behind this approach is to potentially sacrifice the lives of the hostages so that Hamas can be totally defeated and the war brought to a close. This could also allow for an end to the humanitarian crisis, and the beginning of a process to rebuild Gaza.
  • Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, currently on a state visit to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, showed the Estonian President images of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavsky, held hostage by Hamas, juxtaposed against a staged photo, revealed by a German newspaper, showing Gazans holding empty pots in front of cameras (details here), but not in a food line. Herzog said:

    “This is an image of Evyatar David, a young kid who was at the party, at the Nova Festival, and he is now skin and bones. His situation is life-threatening. And you see the fat hand of his captor – they have food there… Therefore, in order to resolve the situation, we tell the world: You want to move forward? Get a hostage deal, get a ceasefire…. Instead of that, we see a PR campaign like this one revealed in a German newspaper. You see a photographer staging Gaza people to show that they are lacking food. This is staged. We don't shy away from the humanitarian need to help the people of Gaza, but we ask the world not to fall for the lies. Condemn Hamas and say to Hamas, you want to move on? Get the hostages out.”
     
  • President Herzog spoke by phone on Monday with the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, who is based in Geneva. The President conveyed the urgent danger facing the Israeli hostages and the need for immediate action to assist them. He called on the Red Cross to intervene and provide medical assistance to the hostages, who he said are in critical condition and being deliberately starved as part of Hamas’s brutal manipulation, which is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law. He said, “The horrifying images of Evyatar and Rom, their bones protruding from starvation, indicate they are in mortal danger — we urge the Red Cross to act in every possible way to help the hostages.”

Diplomatic Developments

  • Several senior US leaders have been in Israel in recent days, engaging in high-level diplomatic meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others.
  • On Monday, Netanyahu met with the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson and his wife, Kelly Lary, in Shiloh in Samaria. The visit marked the most senior visit of a US official to a settlement located over the “Green Line.” The Prime Minister and his wife were invited to a joint dinner in Shiloh that was also attended by the United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his wife, along with Members of Congress Michael McCaul, Claudia Tenney, Michael Cloud, and Nathaniel Moran. During the event, the group also met with Ditza Or, the mother of the hostage Avinatan Or.
  • Governor of Arkansas Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who is also the daughter of the US Ambassador), US Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), and US Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) have also visited Israel this week.
  • On Tuesday, Israel’s cabinet unanimously voted to dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, marking only the second time in the country’s history that an attorney general has been fired. The government accused her of repeatedly obstructing its policies and appointments for political reasons. Still, the High Court of Justice quickly froze the dismissal pending judicial review of the legality of the new procedure used to remove her.
  • This week, the Knesset formally approved the dismissal of Yuli Edelstein as chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, replacing him with fellow Likud member Boaz Bismuth following a 29–4 vote by Likud MKs. According to the Israeli press, the move was orchestrated by Prime Minister Netanyahu to appease ultra-Orthodox coalition partners after Edelstein refused to advance a draft exemption law without enforcement mechanisms. Edelstein publicly stated that he “single-handedly prevented” a flawed exemption bill and warned that replacing him would not resolve the underlying issues. Despite the vote, the Knesset’s legal advisor has called the legality of ousting Edelstein into question.

In Other News...

  • In the largest-ever export deal for an Israeli company, the owners of the Israeli Leviathan oil field, located off Israel’s Mediterranean coast, have signed an agreement to export natural gas to Egypt for $35 billion.
  • Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has ordered the Lebanese Army to present him with a plan by the end of August to disarm Hezbollah, a process he said should be completed by the end of 2025. While Hezbollah conceded that the decision is “a capitulation to Israel,” it did not openly threaten the government, but instead refused to disarm.
  • A report in Israel Hayom, a leading Israeli daily, suggests that motivation among Israeli teens to draft into combat units in the IDF has dramatically risen—for both males and females. The data showed that:
    • 95 percent of pre-draft Israeli teens say they want to serve; and 74 percent of males wish to draft into combat roles.
    • Before the war, 55 percent of Israeli teens who were invited to tryouts for elite combat units turned up. In the most recent round of tryouts, the turnout rate was 80 percent.
    • Despite being exempt from combat, in the March 2025 draft round, over 5,000 females enlisted in combat roles, compared to 1,300 in 2014. Some 54 percent of eligible females expressed interest in serving in combat.

Further Reading

For more information, please contact: Jewish Federations of North America’s Dani Wassner dani.wassner@jewishfederations.org. Subscribe to this weekly update here.