hebrew → English transcript

We did not say we are stopping all humanitarian aid from entering.

We said we are, at the same time, stopping the trucks that Hamas takes over and basically takes the lion’s share for itself,

takes for itself, and then it sells the leftovers—the leftovers—at exorbitant prices to the Palestinian population

And by doing so, it recruits new terrorists, militants, and says to a Palestinian woman,

Do you want this flour? Give me your son, fifteen years old.

And that is how they sustain their war machine, and therefore we wanted to prevent it.

And we said we will prevent it, and at the same time we will set up distribution points via the GHF,

the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, run by the Americans, who will distribute the food.

So we did not want to do much here; on the contrary, we wanted to bypass Hamas’s looting and robbery.

It just did not work as we wanted; it did not succeed because there were not enough points, etc.

Therefore we learned the lesson, we stopped that, and now we are operating in a different way,

Aid is going in; we are doing our utmost to ensure that most of it does not reach Hamas.

And at the same time, we really are increasing the number of distribution points and the secured routes

And also the airdrops, the airdrops that usually do not reach Hamas.

There is no starvation, no starvation; there was no starvation, and there wasn't--there was a shortage, and there certainly was no policy of starvation.

I just said at the press conference, if we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy,

After those two million, they wouldn't be alive today, after 20 months.

Same with genocide: if we had wanted to carry out genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.

There is no starvation, no policy of starvation; there was a shortage and we need to stop it, and we are doing that--this is exactly what we are doing.