Many of Israel’s most ardent backers on the international stage appear to be reaching their breaking point over the worsening conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.

Within the past week, President Donald Trump described the plight facing Palestinians as “real starvation,” while the leaders of both the U.K. and France made unprecedented announcements that they could recognize Palestinian statehood as soon as this fall. Trump, for his part, disagreed with their decisions.

Recommended Stories

• Trump’s Golden Dome dream would protect US against electromagnetic pulses, expert says
• As prospects for ceasefire fade, war in Ukraine could continue into next year
• Hegseth announces Baltic states will meet NATO 5% spending commitment

The comments from Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer come amid new warnings from human rights groups about the widespread effect Israel’s military operations are having on the entire Gaza population.

The war has gone on for nearly 22 months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, the largest in Israel’s history. The terrorism group killed roughly 1,200 people in the attack and kidnapped about 250 others, about 50 of whom are still being held in Gaza. About twenty of those hostages are believed to be still alive.

Israel’s ground and aerial military campaign has devastated the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands of people, injuring countless others, and displacing the population several times, pushing them into smaller areas.

Humanitarian Aid

The lack of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza, which has been a decision by Israel’s government, has created the “worst-case scenario of famine,” according to a new alert from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a United Nations-backed initiative.

The IPC alert said there was “mounting evidence” that shows “starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” adding that more than 20,000 children have been “admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July.”

This warning from the IPC comes a day after two Israeli human rights organizations accused the government of meeting the definition of genocide with its actions in Gaza. The two organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights—Israel, became the first Israeli institutions to make the determination.

Israeli officials have disputed the labeling of their operation as a genocide, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplayed the claims of starvation in Gaza over the weekend.

The conversation surrounding humanitarian aid, and ensuring it gets to the civilians in need and is not taken by Hamas, has gone on since the first months of the war, which is now nearing its second anniversary.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. military built a temporary pier in the Mediterranean Sea to transport aid from other countries into Gaza via maritime route, while the Air Force also carried out airdrops of aid from aircraft overhead, which other countries have recently resumed. The Trump administration has backed the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which is now responsible for aid distribution. However, their efforts have been mired by multiple instances of violence breaking out near their facilities.

Under the current arrangement, Palestinians have to travel to the aid distribution sites to receive aid, and even then, it’s not guaranteed for each individual, and there are safety concerns.

Earlier this month, 20 Palestinians were killed in a stampede near one of the sites in southern Gaza, an instance that demonstrates the volatility in the environment. A GHF spokesperson claimed the deadly incident was not an accident, but was “deliberately incited chaos” prompted by “armed Hamas operatives.”

Several Senate Democrats have called on the U.S. to abandon the GHF aid set up and return to the United Nations’s previous way of distributing aid, but Israel and the U.S. have accused the U.N. of having anti-Israel bias after a handful of local workers with the U.N.’s Palestinian office were implicated in the Oct. 7 attack.

Trump also said this week that the U.S. would set up new food centers, and State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce declined to provide additional details on the plan during Tuesday’s briefing.

Statehood

Macron announced last week that France will recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly next September and days later, Starmer announced that it, too, would recognize a sovereign Palestinian state “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a Two-State solution.”

Less powerful European nations, including Ireland and Norway, have already recognized a Palestinian state, though support from either or both France and the U.K. would be unprecedented.

Starmer’s comments put the pressure on Israel, not Hamas, in his announcement. He did not say what would happen to Hamas if a deal was not agreed upon by September, and knowing that U.K. recognition is only two months away, if a deal doesn’t come to fruition, it could empower them not to agree to any proposal.

Both leaders said statehood would require the demilitarization of Hamas, though it’s not clear if the devastated U.S.-designated terrorist group would be willing to put down its weapons indefinitely in exchange for statehood.

Israel’s stance

Israeli leaders have expressed concerns that Palestinian statehood, especially without the demilitarization and removal of Hamas as the governing body of Gaza, could allow the group to reconstitute and prepare for another Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which Hamas has said it wants to replicate.

Netanyahu, on Tuesday, accused Starmer of “reward[ing] Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims,” adding, “A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW. Appeasement toward jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you, too. It will not happen.”

He has said repeatedly that granting Palestinian statehood would amount to rewarding Hamas for carrying out the Oct. 7 attack.

Retired Israeli Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, the head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told the Washington Examiner that a Palestinian state in Gaza could “fall into the hands of Hamas,” and become “a base from which terrorism is going to be launched against Israel.”

Kuperwasser, who served as the Israeli Defense Force’s Military Intelligence Research Division, believes Israeli forces may need to occupy Gaza to ensure Hamas cannot reconstitute before “eventually” handing power over to “more moderate Palestinians … once they are convinced that Hamas is not coming back.”

Right-wing members of the Israeli government want Israel to occupy Gaza and push Palestinians out of the territory, and they have been rebuked internationally for expressing those viewpoints. The two primary Israeli lawmakers who fit this bill, Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, were banned from entering the Netherlands on Monday to apply pressure on the Israeli government.

U.S. on statehood

President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Starmer did not bring up the issue of statehood during their meeting on Monday. He said the U.S. “is not in that camp ” regarding putting pressure on Israel.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called the U.K. and France’s announcement “foolish.”

“It’s a foolish thing to do because all it’s doing is setting back any hope that Hamas is going to give up. This emboldens them, and that’s what Macron is doing,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday. “What they’re saying is very detrimental to any future peace process, and it’s certainly detrimental to dealing with Gaza right now. It has just made Hamas feel like they have a real opportunity to declare a victory.”

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce reiterated that sentiment, saying, “It gives one group hope, and that is Hamas. It is rewarding of that kind of behavior, that if you wait long enough, if you don’t cooperate, in any other normal environment where someone is so utterly defeated, they would surrender,” Bruce continued. “In this case, that just does not occur.”

This week, the United Nations is hosting a conference in New York City to discuss a two-state solution. France and Saudi Arabia are co-chairing the two-day event.

Bruce called the conference a “publicity stunt ” that was “unproductive and ill-timed.” She argued that “the conference will prolong the war, embolden Hamas, reward its obstruction, and undermine real-world efforts to achieve peace.”