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Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff visits Gaza aid ‘death trap’

Peter Beaumont

Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has visited Gaza today and been shown one of the controversial aid sites around which Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinian people waiting for aid.

Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy for the Middle East, had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid mounting international horror over starvation in Gaza that follows 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 reported by a number Israeli media organisations and comes as Human Rights Watch on Friday described the aid 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 nine hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces attempting to reach the sites.

Steve Witkoff (right) and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (right) at a GHF facility in Gaza. Photograph: X

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 became the first GOP lawmaker to call Israel’s assault on 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.

See also  Trump says he does not endorse Netanyahu’s claim there is no starvation in Gaza | Donald Trump
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