Gaza crisis: Trump's envoy in Israel as criticism mounts
Photo:
AFP / Omar Al-Qattaa
By
Dave Clark
with
AFP team
in Gaza
US President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Israel on Thursday (local time) on ways to end the crisis in Gaza, where nearly 22 months of grinding war and dire shortages of food have drawn mounting international criticism.
Witkoff, who has been involved in months of stalled negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after his arrival, the Israeli leader's office said.
The envoy may also visit a US-backed group distributing food in Gaza, according to Israeli reports.
Gaza's civil defence agency reported at least 58 Palestinians were killed late on Wednesday when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd attempting to block an aid convoy - the latest in a spate of near-daily incidents of desperate aid seekers being shot.
The Israeli military said troops had fired "warning shots" as Gazans gathered around the aid trucks.
An AFP correspondent saw bullet-riddled corpses in Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital.
Jameel Ashour, who lost a relative in the shooting, told AFP at the overflowing morgue that Israeli troops opened fire after "people saw thieves stealing and dropping food [and] the hungry crowd rushed in hopes of getting some".
Witkoff has been the top US representative in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas but the discussions broke down last week when Israel and the United States recalled their delegations from Doha.
Steve Witkoff.
Photo:
AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
Israel is under mounting international pressure to agree to a ceasefire and allow the world to flood a hungry Gaza with food, with Canada the latest Western government to announce plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said the worsening suffering of civilians in Gaza left "no room for delay in coordinated international action to support peace".
Trump criticised Canada's decision and, in a post on his Truth Social network, placed the blame for the crisis squarely on Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose 7 October, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war.
"The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!" declared Trump, one of Israel's staunchest international supporters.
Earlier this week, however, the US president contradicted Netanyahu's insistence that reports of hunger in Gaza were exaggerated, warning that the territory faces "real starvation".
UN-backed experts have reported
"famine is now unfolding" in Gaza
, with images of sick and emaciated children drawing outrage and prompting first France, then Britain and
now Canada to line up in support of Palestinian statehood
.
Portugal on Thursday said it was "considering recognition of the Palestinian state".
Israel is also under pressure to resolve the crisis from other traditional supporters.
Germany's top diplomat Johann Wadephul, who met Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in Jerusalem on Thursday, warned before setting off that "Israel is finding itself increasingly in the minority".
Wadephul noted that Germany's European allies
increasingly favour recognising Palestinian statehood
, which Israeli leaders generally oppose.
Reacting to Canada's announcement, Israel decried a "distorted campaign of international pressure".
The US State Department said it would deny visas to officials from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank - the core of any future Palestinian state.
The Hamas attack that triggered that war resulted in the deaths of 1219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.
Of the 251 people seized in the attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 declared dead by the Israeli military.
The Israeli offensive, nearing its 23rd month, has killed at least 60,249 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry.
This week UN aid agencies said deaths from starvation had begun.
The civil defence agency said Israeli attacks across Gaza on Thursday killed at least 32 people.
"Enough!" cried Najah Aish Umm Fadi, who lost relatives in a strike on a camp for the displaced in central Gaza.
"We put up with being hungry, but now the death of children who had just been born?"
Further north, Amir Zaqot told AFP after getting his hands on some of the aid parachuted from planes, that "this is what death looks like. People are fighting each other with knives."
"If the crossings were opened... food could reach us. But this is nonsense," Zaqot said of the airdrops.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP cannot independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence and other parties.
- AFP
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Following a deliberate policy in March of stopping food from coming in, it resumed deliveries of food in May through a very limited set of "stations" it established through a new US-backed organisation (the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), in a system that seemed designed to fail. Before Israel's decision in March to stop food from coming in, the price of flour in Gaza was roughly back to its prewar levels (having previously peaked in 2024 in another round of border closures). Since March, food prices have gone up by an annualised inflation rate of more than 5,000%. The excuse the Israeli government gives for its starvation policy is that Hamas controls the population by restricting food supplies. It blames Hamas for any shortage of food . However, if you want to disarm an enemy of its ability to wield food supplies as a weapon by rationing them, the obvious way to do so is the opposite: you would increase the food supply dramatically and hence lower its price. Restricting supplies and increasing their value is primarily immoral and criminal, but it is also counterproductive for Israel's stated aims. Indeed, flooding Gaza with food would have achieved much more in weakening Hamas than the starvation policy the Israeli government has chosen. The UN's top humanitarian aid official has described Israel's decision to halt humanitarian assistance to put pressure on Hamas as "cruel collective punishment" - something forbidden under international humanitarian law. Cormac Ó Gráda, the Irish economic historian of famines, quotes a Kashmiri proverb which says "famine goes, but the stains remain". The current famine in Gaza will leave long-lasting pain for Gazans and an enduring moral stain on Israel - for many generations. Ó Gráda points out two main ways in which the consequences of famines endure. Most obvious is the persistent memory of it; second are the direct effects on the long-term wellbeing of exposed populations and their descendants. The Irish and the Indians have not forgotten the famines that affected them. They still resent the British government for its actions. The memory of these famines still influences relations between Ireland, India and the UK, just as Ukraine's famine of the early 1930s is still a background to the Ukraine-Russia war. The generational impact is also significant. Several studies in China find children conceived during China's Great Leap Forward famine of 1959-1960 (which also killed millions) are less healthy , face more mental health challenges and have lower cognitive abilities than those conceived either before or after the famine. Other researchers found similar evidence from famines in Ireland and the Netherlands , supporting what is known as the "foetal origins" hypothesis, which proposes that the period of gestation has significant impacts on health in adulthood. Even more worryingly, recent research shows these harmful effects can be transmitted to later generations through epigenetic channels . Each day without available and accessible food supplies means more serious ongoing effects for the people of Gaza and the Israeli civilian hostages still held by Hamas - as well as later generations. Failure to prevent the famine will persist in collective memory as a moral stain on the international community, but primarily on Israel. Only immediate flooding of the strip with food aid can help now. Ilan Noy is the chair in the Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. This story was originally published on The Conversation.
