Witkoff and Huckabee to enter Gaza as anger over famine mounts
US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee plan to enter Gaza on Friday to inspect aid distribution sites, as global rage mounts over the looming famine in the Gaza Strip.
"Tomorrow, special envoy Witkoff and ambassador Huckabee will be travelling into Gaza to inspect the current (aid) distribution sites and secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear firsthand about this dire situation on the ground," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday.
The visit will be Witkoff’s second to Gaza and the first visit from a US ambassador to the enclave in over two decades. It reflects mounting pressure by Trump to address the enclaves' starving Palestinians, as resentment grows not only among US allies but within his own MAGA base.
Trump dispatched Witkoff to Israel on Thursday, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The death toll in the Gaza Strip has passed 60,000, mainly women and children, as Israel continues to pummel the enclave with no ceasefire in sight.
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The Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday that at least 154 people, including 89 children, have died from hunger since the war started in October 2023.
Backlash to Gaza famine
Those seeking aid have been met with bombardment and gunfire from Israeli soldiers and American mercenaries. The US and Israel sidelined the United Nations in Gaza and established the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to distribute aid at four sites for Gaza's two million-strong population.
The images of starving Palestinians running through cage-like structures in a barren desert to pick up packages of meagre food have started to filter out to the US public and are causing backlash.
Tony Aguilar, a former Green Beret and contractor who worked for GHF, has shared with US media harrowing stories of atrocities committed by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers at the sites. This week, he appeared in an interview with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen and conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson.
Earlier this week, for the first time, a majority of Senate Democrats and two Independent allies voted to block the sale of $675m in weapons to Israel. The measure was defeated, and all Republicans voted against the resolutions.
But Trump’s base of "America First" conservatives is also turning against Israel's war on Gaza.
This week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch Trump supporter, became the first Republican member of Congress to declare Israel’s war a genocide, joining dozens of human rights groups and scholars, including two prominent Israeli ones, to do so.
The conservative podcaster Carlson has run a series of back-to-back interviews critical of Israel’s war on Gaza and the US’s involvement in the scandal-ridden GHF.
Analysts told MEE that Trump has been forced to manage the ugly realities of the Gaza famine because he has decided not to extend political capital to push Netanyahu into a ceasefire and permanent end to the war.
On Thursday, Trump reiterated previous comments that the humanitarian crisis would end if Hamas releases the captives, but he did not spell out a permanent end to the war.
"The fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND FREE THE HOSTAGES!!!" Trump said on Thursday in a social media post.
US isolation deepens
The US has become more isolated on the world stage as it faces pressure from European and Arab partners to rein in Israel.
In Egypt, Arab officials tell MEE there is growing alarm that Israel will use Gaza’s famine to implement a forced displacement of Palestinians to Sinai. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi made a rare video address to Trump this week, calling on him to end the war after an Egyptian police station was stormed by protesters angry over Gaza.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France jointly hosted a UN conference that called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas and the creation of a Palestinian state along the lines of the 1967 border, also known as the green line, which includes Gaza, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
The UK announced this week that unless a ceasefire in Gaza is reached by September, it will recognise a Palestinian state. Canada and Portugal have joined the UK in announcing plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
Germany's top diplomat, Johann Wadephul, who met Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, warned before setting off that "Israel is finding itself increasingly in the minority".
So far, the US is doubling down. The US State Department announced it would deny visas to officials from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and which the US’s Arab allies want to govern Gaza after the war.
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