Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel has captured a new strip of territory in the Gaza Strip, part of a new strategy to seize land in the enclave after the cease-fire with Hamas collapsed last month.

Israel has conducted a new round of airstrikes to force Hamas to release more Israeli hostages. Hamas argues that Israel is violating the agreement it signed in January, which created a path toward ending the war. Both sides have been speaking to mediators about a potential deal to restore the truce — so far without success.

Meanwhile, some anti-Hamas protests have also broken out in parts of Gaza. And the United Nations accused Israel of killing more than a dozen rescue workers.

What is happening in Gaza?

On March 18, Israel launched what it called “extensive strikes” on Hamas targets in Gaza, shattering the fragile truce in the enclave.

In the weeks since, Israeli ground troops have seized the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, from which they withdrew during the cease-fire with Hamas, and they have expanded ground raids in northern and southern Gaza. The Israeli military has issued sweeping evacuation orders, displacing more than 140,000 people in Gaza since the cease-fire broke down, according to the United Nations.

On Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli forces were capturing what he described as the “Morag Corridor,” an apparent reference to territory near a former Israeli settlement in southern Gaza. It wasn’t clear how large the area Israel had seized was or how long it intended to hold it.

More than 1,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the cease-fire broke down, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

There is also a growing humanitarian crisis in the enclave after Mr. Netanyahu ordered a halt to all aid deliveries there, in an attempt to pressure Hamas into accepting a new hostage release deal.

The World Food Program, a U.N. agency, said it had run out of the flour and fuel needed to keep bakeries in Gaza open. It will distribute its last food parcels this week, and its remaining supplies in Gaza are expected to run out within two weeks. The lack of aid deliveries has prompted violent competition for food and driven up prices.

Gaza health officials say that more than 50,000 people have been killed in the enclave since the war began after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That attack killed 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage to Gaza.

How has Hamas responded?

On March 20, Hamas fired three rockets at central Israel for the first time in months, all of which were either intercepted or fell in open areas. That was a far cry from the massive barrages with which the group pummeled Israel in the first months of the war.

In their public statements, Hamas officials have focused on getting back to the cease-fire.

It is unclear how forceful a military response the group can muster after months of devastating war. Israel has systematically killed many of the group’s top leaders and fighters. The group is believed to have recruited new members into its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, but analysts say they might not be as well-trained and experienced as their predecessors.

Members of the Israeli Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee — who receive classified intelligence briefings — said in a recent letter that Hamas still had more than 25,000 fighters.

U.N. accuses Israel of killing rescue workers

As Israeli forces advanced on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on March 23, an ambulance crew set out to evacuate civilians wounded by Israeli shelling.

The ambulance and its crew were hit on the way, and several more ambulances and a fire truck headed to the scene to rescue them, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, as did a U.N. vehicle, the United Nations said. Seventeen people were dispatched in total. Then they all went silent.

It took five days for the United Nations and Red Crescent to negotiate with the Israeli military for safe passage to search for the missing people. U.N. officials said their retrieval team found 15 people dead, most of their bodies dumped in a mass grave.

On March 30, the United Nations said Israel had killed them — a rare accusation by the organization, which is typically cautious about assigning clear blame. After firing on the vehicles, U.N. officials said, Israeli forces bulldozed and crushed the ambulances, a fire truck and the U.N. vehicle.

The Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations said all of those killed were humanitarian workers who should never have come under attack. The Red Crescent called the killings a war crime and demanded accountability.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said on X on March 31 that nine of those killed were Palestinian militants. He said Israeli forces “did not randomly attack” an ambulance, but that several vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals toward Israeli troops, prompting them to shoot.

He did not directly say whether the militants were in the emergency vehicles or address the identities of the other six people killed.

Anti-Hamas protests in Gaza

For three consecutive days last month, hundreds of people marched through the northern Gazan town of Beit Lahia, demanding an end both of the war and of Hamas’s 18-year-old rule over Gaza — public protests that spread to a number of other towns in the battered enclave.

“Hamas needs to go away,” said Ahmad al-Masri, 26, a resident of Beit Lahia who helped call for the demonstrations. “If it doesn’t, the bloodshed, the wars and the destruction won’t stop.”

While most of the demonstrations have been small, they represent the boldest challenge to Hamas’s authority by Palestinians in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack on Israel of October 2023 and the ensuing war, which has reduced cities to rubble. They also embody the frustration of Palestinians who are again living through Israeli bombardment, and make clear that at least some Palestinians have put aside their fears about potential retribution by Hamas, which has governed Gaza with a heavy hand.

How did cease-fire talks break down?

The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which went into effect on Jan. 19, paused the fighting but did not secure an end to the war.

Instead, the agreement committed both sides to an initial truce that lasted at least six weeks as well as a broader framework for ending the conflict. As part of the first phase, Hamas handed over 30 hostages and the remains of eight others, while Israel released more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners.

During the six-week cease-fire, Israel and Hamas were supposed to negotiate the terms for the next steps in the truce: an end to the war, the full withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the release of the remaining living hostages seized by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

But those talks stalled because of disagreement over fundamental issues.

Hamas, which has tried to use the hostages as leverage, has refused to release significant numbers of additional captives until Israel promises to end the war permanently.

But Mr. Netanyahu’s government has refused to agree to end the war unless Hamas gives up control of Gaza or dismantles its military wing. Hamas has shown little inclination to agree to the Israeli demands.

To increase pressure on Hamas, Israel halted the delivery of aid and humanitarian supplies into Gaza earlier in March, and the week before launching airstrikes it cut off electricity that flowed to a water desalination plant in the enclave.

Those decisions exacerbated hardships faced by civilians in the shattered enclave, where Palestinian health authorities say more than 48,000 people have been killed.

Hamas and its allies seized more than 250 people during the October 2023 attacks that ignited the war in Gaza. More than 130 have been released, including more than 100 during an initial cease-fire in the early months of the war and 30 more during the truce that began in January. The hostages were exchanged for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The Israeli military has also retrieved the bodies of at least 40 others. Less than half of the 59 who remain in Gaza are alive, according to the Israeli government.

Mr. Netanyahu has argued that the operation will help pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages. Many relatives of the remaining hostages are not convinced: They have often accused Mr. Netanyahu of effectively abandoning those still held there by returning to the war against Hamas.

Reporting was contributed by Patrick Kingsley, Adam Rasgon, Yan Zhuang, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad.