US President Donald Trump said Monday that he is “not particularly convinced” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assurance that there is no starvation in Gaza, and later asserted there was “real starvation” in the Strip, adding: “You can’t fake that.”
Trump’s comments, along with promises to set up “food centers” in the Strip, came amid global condemnations of Israel for the humanitarian situation in the enclave, after images circulated last week of emaciated children in the war-torn territory.
Israel has said there is no widespread famine in Gaza, asserting that the photos are of isolated cases or are misleading, but started yesterday to pause all fighting in large swathes of the Strip for 10 hours each day, while facilitating a surge of aid by land and air.
Taking questions from reporters at his golf resort in Scotland, Trump was asked whether he was convinced by the Israeli premier’s insistence that “there is no starvation in Gaza.”
“Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry,” he said, standing alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and wife Victoria, ahead of a meeting between the two leaders.
Starmer was far more forceful: “I think people in Britain are revolted at seeing what they are seeing on their screens,” he said, though he also said that Hamas can play no part in any future Palestinian government.
Starmer, who is facing domestic pressure to follow France in declaring that the UK will recognize a Palestinian state, described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “absolutely intolerable.”
“We need to galvanize other countries in support of getting that aid in, and, yes, that does involve putting pressure on Israel, because it absolutely is a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.
Asked whether there was more Israel could do, Trump said as well: “I think Israel can do a lot.” He added that, when next speaking to Netanyahu, he would insist: “I want them to make sure they get the food.”
The US president bemoaned Hamas’s commandeering of much of the aid that has gone into the Strip, saying: “We’ve given a lot of money to Gaza for food and everything else. A lot of that money is stolen by Hamas, and a lot of the food is stolen.”
Later, after his meeting with Starmer, Trump said: “The United States will be helping with food. We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff, I see it. You can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.”
The president said the US would “set up food centers, and we’re going to do it in conjunction with some very good people,” together with the UK and “all of the European nations, joining us.”
Trump said the new “food centers” would have “no boundaries,” and people will be able to just “walk in.”
“We’re not going to have fences where they see the food from 30 yards away, and they see the food, it’s all there, but nobody’s at it because they have fences set up, that no one can even get it. It’s crazy what’s going on over there,” he said of the current situation.
After blocking all aid from entering the Strip between March and May, Israel relied heavily on the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was created to avoid aid being diverted to Hamas, for subsequent distribution.
However, GHF sites have seen near-daily incidents in which IDF troops have shot at Gazans, in what the military has presented as deadly crowd control incidents. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 1,000 people have been killed near the GHF sites, though Israel says the toll is exaggerated.
Trump also addressed the failure of negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach a temporary ceasefire and release of some of the hostages.
Netanyahu repeatedly has said that Israel will only end the war if Hamas is disarmed and exiled, while Hamas has refused to agree to a third ceasefire and hostage release unless it leads to a permanent end of the war — presumably with the group returning to power as the Strip’s de facto government.
Trump said that Hamas does not want a ceasefire deal, and, as a result, Israel must fight differently in Gaza.
“They have totally changed now,” he said of Hamas. “They don’t want to give hostages.”
Trump said that the Hamas representatives “were really unwilling to talk” during recent negotiations in Doha, and asserted that Iran had “interjected themselves” in the talks.
“I think they got involved in this negotiation, telling Hamas and giving Hamas signals and orders. And that’s not good,” he said.
“We got a tremendous amount of hostages out. But it would take place in drips and drabs,” Trump said, referring to the previous two hostage-ceasefire deals.
“But I always said when you come when you get down to the final 10 or 20, you’re not going to be able to make a deal with these people because they use them as a shield. And when they give them up, they no longer have a shield,” he said.
Twenty hostages held by terror groups in Gaza are believed to still be alive, along with the bodies of 28 hostages who have been confirmed dead, and two hostages about whom Israel has expressed “grave concern.”
“Now, possibly, the fight will have to be a little bit different,” he said, adding that he told Netanyahu, “You’re going to have to now maybe do it a different way,” and that the two leaders were discussing “various plans.”
“If they didn’t have the hostages, things would go very quickly, but they do. And we know where they have them in some cases. And you don’t want to go riding roughshod over that area because that means those hostages will be killed,” Trump told reporters.
Israel started operations in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, earlier this month, after avoiding the area for the first 20 months of the war, due to concerns that hostages were being held there.
“Now, there are some people that would say, ‘Well, that’s the price you pay.’ But we don’t like to say that. We don’t want to say that. And I don’t think the people of Israel want to say that either, which is pretty amazing,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments were echoed by US Vice President JD Vance, who told reporters: “I don’t know if you’ve all seen these images. You have got some really, really heartbreaking cases. You’ve got little kids who are clearly starving to death.”
“Israel’s got to do more to let that aid in,” he stressed. “And we’ve also got to wage war on Hamas so that those folks stop preventing food from coming into this territory.”
Vance said the US wants to make sure Palestinian civilians in Gaza get food, while adding that it also wants to ensure that Hamas “gets the hell out of Gaza.”
Despite the apparent break down in hostage talks, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel on Monday that Israel’s hostage negotiating team remained “constant contact” with Egypt and Qatar, which are in touch with Hamas.
A diplomat based in the Gulf, meanwhile, told Haaretz that Hamas surprised Israel and the mediators by demanding the release of 30 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences for each of the living Israeli hostages, instead of 20.
Israel released 30 lifers and 20 other Palestinian prisoners in January to free five Israeli female surveillance soldiers.
“It’s not over yet, and it hasn’t blown up,” the diplomat said, referring to talks between Israel and Hamas.
Israel recalled its negotiating team for consultations after Hamas gave its answer to a Qatari ceasefire proposal on Thursday.
At the same time, an Israeli team has been in Cairo for the last two weeks, discussing the humanitarian aid influx into Gaza that started in recent days, an Egyptian diplomat told The Times of Israel.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi issued an impassioned call on Monday for Trump to intervene to put an end to the fighting in Gaza, saying, “The time has come to end the war.”
In a video address, Sissi said Trump “is the one capable of stopping the war, bringing in aid, and ending this suffering.”
“Therefore, I am making a special appeal to His Excellency President Trump: Please make every effort to stop the war and bring in aid.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday, after a meeting of his security cabinet, that there was no decision to take any measures against Israel, after his office previously said Berlin was ready to ramp up pressure over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“For now, we want to await the foreign minister’s trip and the talks that will be held with the Israeli government in the coming days,” he said. “However, we reserve the right to take such steps.“
German FM Johann Wadephul is slated to be in Israel on Thursday.
Merz did say, however, that Germany would organize an airlift of humanitarian aid to the Strip, adding that Berlin will work with Paris and London on the initiative.
Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates have airdropped aid to Gaza in recent days, and Spain has said it plans to do so later this week.
In Israel, too, the government came under denunciation for its handling of the war.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid told reporters at a Tel Aviv press conference that Netanyahu’s government has “failed in the war in Gaza,” stating that his assessment is based on “intelligence and operational information” shared with him by virtue of his position.
“It’s a total disaster. This is a strategic failure which is leading to an operational and political failure,” he said, adding that “the Israeli government no longer knows why soldiers continue to die in Gaza.”
If the war is not ended immediately, the hostages would not return home, Israeli soldiers would continue to be killed, and the “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza would get even worse, he warned.
Lapid insisted that there is an alternative, however, calling for a comprehensive hostage deal, after which Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza and continue the “work of eliminating Hamas” from the perimeter of the Palestinian enclave.
Civil governance would be taken over by “a coalition of moderate Arab countries led by Egypt,” he added.
“Only the Netanyahu government refuses to discuss the question of how the war will end. It has not presented any plan, any political vision. A government that is not even willing to mobilize the ultra-Orthodox is a government that does not really want to win and cannot really win.”
Turning to the humanitarian situation, Lapid insists that “the management of humanitarian aid in Gaza has collapsed” and that Israel “needs to make sure that there is no hunger in Gaza,” both out of pragmatic considerations and because such a policy is in line with Jewish values.
Lapid warns that “economic and legal sanctions” against Israel could be implemented, while anybody who fought “will have to hope that they are not arrested the moment they leave Israel’s borders.”
The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in Gaza in 2014.
Sam Sokol contributed to this report.