Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff visits Gaza aid ‘death trap’ | Israel-Gaza war

Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has visited Gaza and been shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.

Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy for the Middle East, had earlier met the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu amid mounting international horror over conditions of starvation in Gaza occurring after months of Israeli-imposed aid restrictions.

The visit to the site in Rafah by Witkoff – a former real estate lawyer with no foreign policy or humanitarian background, who has also met Vladimir Putin on Trump’s behalf – was first reported by a number of Israeli media organisations.

His visit comes as Human Rights Watch described the sites run by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as “death traps” that had become the scene of regular “bloodbaths”. The UN has said almost 900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces attempting to reach the sites.

Belkis Wille, the associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch, said on Friday: “US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”

She added: “Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families.”

The UN said on Friday that 1,353 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces as they waited for aid – 859 around GHF sites and another 514 along the route of UN aid convoys.

A United Nations spokesperson said Israeli policies had led to the widespread desperation in Gaza that meant arriving UN trucks were overwhelmed and stripped before they could reach warehouses.

The UN says that longstanding Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid had created an unpredictable environment, and that meant while a pause in fighting might allow more aid in, Palestinians are not confident aid will reach them.

Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said: “This has resulted in many of our convoys offloaded directly by starving, desperate people as they continue to face deep levels of hunger and are struggling to feed their families. The only way to reach a level of confidence is by having a sustained flow of aid over a period of time.”

While a number of countries have resumed airdrops of aid into Gaza in recent days, aid experts have warned that the amount of food that can be dropped by air is insufficient to counter starvation inside the Palestinian territory.

Israeli officials have said that if there is no progress in the coming days on a deal with Hamas to release the hostages, Israel will expand its operations in Gaza.

International humanitarian agencies and experts say that famine has gripped Gaza after Israel blocked food from entering the territory for two and a half months starting in March.

Since it eased the blockade in late May, Israel has only allowed in a trickle of aid trucks for the UN, about 70 a day on average, according to Israel’s own figures. That is far below the 500-600 trucks a day that UN agencies say are needed – the amount that entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year.

While Netanyahu and other officials have claimed that there is “no hunger in Gaza” or that it is the fault of Hamas looting or the UN’s failings, incontrovertible evidence has been offered by the UN’s food security monitor of the spread of famine amid Israel’s choking of the entry of aid – a policy critics say amounts to the crime of using starvation as a weapon.

According to the White House, the visit by Witkoff, accompanied by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, was aimed at finding ways to speed deliveries to Gaza. “The special envoy and the ambassador will brief the president immediately after their visit to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution into the region,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters.

Trump on Thursday called the situation in Gaza “a terrible thing” when asked about comments from his ally and Republican US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who termed Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory a genocide.

“Oh, it’s terrible what’s occurring there, yeah, it’s a terrible thing. People are very hungry,” Trump told reporters when asked about Greene’s social media comments, while also saying Washington had given financial assistance to address the hunger crisis in Gaza.