Special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited food distribution sites in Gaza on Friday, as the United States seeks to establish a plan to get more humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave.
The pair’s visit to a Gaza Humanitarian Fund distribution center comes days after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would set up food centers in Gaza to address “real starvation.”
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Witkoff said on social media that they spent five hours inside Gaza “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions, and meeting with [GHF officials] and other agencies.”
He added, “The purpose of the visit was to give [Trump] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
It’s unclear what the administration’s plan to get more aid to people in need could entail. However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Witkoff and Huckabee will brief Trump “immediately after their visit to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution into the region.”
Huckabee called the amount of aid GHF delivers daily “an incredible feat” and said, “Hamas hates GHF [because] it gets food to [people without] being looted by Hamas.”
The GHF has largely been responsible for aid distribution since May, when Israel agreed to allow limited amounts of aid in Gaza after a couple of months of blocking such aid in an effort to apply more pressure on Hamas to make a deal. The U.S. helped set up the arrangement after deciding to stop working with the United Nations in distributing aid.
Nonetheless, food delivery has been beset by problems. The U.N. Office for Project Services reported that since May 15, 1,753 trucks operated by the U.N. were intercepted, “either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully armed actors, during transit in Gaza.” In contrast, just 260 U.N. trucks arrived at their “intended destination in Gaza” over the same time period.
There have been several instances of deadly violence breaking out at the distribution sites, and the GHF has faced international criticism. The organization announced on Friday that it had delivered its one hundred millionth meal, though many of them need to be cooked, thus requiring fuel and water, which are not easily accessible.
The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said in a new alert on Tuesday. Also, this week, two Israeli human rights organizations released reports accusing the government of committing genocide in Gaza.
In response to the increasingly dire situation in Gaza, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada have announced plans to possibly recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
Both Trump and Huckabee have sided with Israeli officials, who argue that granting Palestinian statehood in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, which instigated the current fighting in the long-running conflict, would reward Hamas for carrying out the most deadly attack in Israel’s history.
MIKE HUCKABEE BLAMES EUROPEANS GIVING HAMAS ‘INFLUENCE’ FOR NEGOTIATIONS ENDING
“The reason that Hamas pulled away from all discussions is because they’re watching the Europeans patting them on the back and giving them power and influence,” Huckabee said Thursday on Newsmax’s Wake Up America.
Also this week, for the first time since the war began, the 22-member Arab League, the entire European Union, and another 17 countries backed a declaration signed at a U.N. conference in New York calling for Hamas to give up power in the Gaza Strip as a part of a broader plan to end the war permanently.