Trump says US will partner with Israel to run additional food centers in Gaza, but details are scant

Winnipeg Free Press

3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. will partner with Israel to run new food centers in Gaza to address the worsening humanitarian crisis there, but he and U.S. officials offered few additional details about the plan or how it would differ from existing food distribution centers.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned from a trip to Scotland that Israel would preside over the new food centers 'to make sure the distribution is proper.'
'We're going to be dealing with Israel, and we think they can do a good job of it,' Trump said.
The opaque details come as the Trump administration is facing calls at home and abroad to do more to address the hunger crisis in Gaza. The U.S.'s close ally, Israel, is at the center of an international outcry as more images of emaciated children continue to emerge.
That pressure comes after the U.S. pulled out of talks last week to try to broker a ceasefire in the 21-month Israel-Hamas war, accusing Hamas of acting in bad faith. But Trump this week broke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, disagreeing publicly with him about starvation in Gaza and citing the pictures of hungry people.
The White House described it as 'a new aid plan' to help people in Gaza obtain access to food and promised that details would emerge. It did not elaborate.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Tuesday that she didn't know 'the framework' of how the new aid distribution would work.
'I'm waiting for the president to return. I don't want to get ahead of him,' Bruce said.
Democrats in Congress have implored the Trump administration to step up its role in addressing the suffering and starvation in Gaza.
More than 40 senators signed a letter Tuesday urging the Trump administration to resume ceasefire talks and sharply criticizing the Israeli-backed American organization that had already been created to distribute food aid.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned why the U.S. was not allowing long-standing aid groups to run food centers.
'I'm glad that the president is saying that this is a problem. But if we want to solve the problem, turn to the folks who have been doing this for decades,' Kaine said.
The few details Trump provided about the new food centers appeared similar to a program that was already rolled out in May, after Israel had blocked all food, medicine and other imports for 2 1/2 months.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed American contractor, opened four food distribution sites that month.
Israel and GHF said that system was needed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid. The United Nations, which has been distributing food in Gaza throughout the war when allowed, denies any significant diversion of aid by Hamas.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while heading to the GHF sites, according to witnesses, health officials and the U.N. human rights office. Israel says its forces have only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray and fired occasional shots in the air to prevent dangerous crowding.
The aid sites are in Israeli military zones, which is off limits to independent media.
The U.N. refuses to cooperate with GHF, saying its model violates humanitarian principles by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances and risk their lives for food and because it allows Israel to control aid and use it to further mass displacement.
Trump said Tuesday that he last spoke to Netanyahu two days earlier and that the Israeli leader wants to distribute food 'in a proper manner.'
'I think Israel wants to do it,' Trump said. 'And they'll be good at doing it.'
The president, for the second day in a row, remarked on the images of starving people and kids in Gaza, which seemed to prompt him this week to announce the new plan and his break with Netanyahu.
Trump said Tuesday that everyone who saw the images coming out of Gaza would declare it terrible 'unless they're pretty cold-hearted or, worse than that, nuts.'
'Those are kids that are starving. They are starving,' Trump said. 'They've got to get them food. And we're going to get them food.'
The shift brings Trump closer to some in his MAGA base, who have rejected the Republican Party's long-standing, unequivocal support for Israel and see aid money flowing to the country as yet another misguided foreign intervention.
They include Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch Trump ally, who has echoed the rhetoric of progressive Democrats in recent days.
'I can unequivocally say that what happened to innocent people in Israel on Oct. 7th was horrific. Just as I can unequivocally say that what has been happening to innocent people and children in Gaza is horrific. This war and humanitarian crisis must end!' she wrote on Sunday on X.
On Monday night, she went further, calling what is happening in Gaza 'genocide.'
But Greene's comments do not represent MAGA as a whole.
On Monday, podcaster Charlie Kirk, who leads the powerful Turning Point network, railed against what he deemed a 'propaganda campaign trying to make it seem as if Israel is intentionally starving the people of Gaza.'
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Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Joey Cappelletti in Washington, Jill Colvin in New York and Joseph Krauss in Ottawa, Ontario, contributed to this report.