Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy to the Middle East. Photo / Getty Images
US President Donald Trump’s envoy has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before a visit to inspect aid distribution in Gaza, as a deadly food crisis drove mounting international pressure for a ceasefire.
Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in months of stalled negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, met Netanyahu shortly after his arrival, the Israeli leader’s office said.
On Friday (local time), he is to visit Gaza, the White House announced.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Witkoff, who visited Gaza in January, would inspect “distribution sites and secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear firsthand about this dire situation on the ground”.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also met Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and afterwards declared: “The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is beyond imagination.
“Here, the Israeli government must act quickly, safely and effectively to provide humanitarian and medical aid to prevent mass starvation from becoming a reality,” he said.
“I have the impression that this has been understood today.”
In an example of the deadly problems facing aid efforts in Gaza, the territory’s civil defence agency said that at least 58 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd attempting to block an aid convoy.
The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad meanwhile released a video showing German-Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski.
In the six-minute video, Braslavski, speaking in Hebrew, is seen watching recent news footage of the crisis in Gaza. He identifies himself and pleads with the Israeli Government to secure his release.
Braslavski was a security guard at the Nova music festival, one of the sites targeted by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in the October 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
“They managed to break Rom. Even the strongest person has a breaking point,” his family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel.
“Rom is an example of all the hostages. They must all be brought home now.”
The Israeli military said troops had fired “warning shots” as Gazans gathered around the aid trucks. An AFP correspondent saw stacks of bullet-riddled corpses in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Jameel Ashour, who lost a relative in the shooting, told AFP at the overflowing morgue that Israeli troops opened fire after “people saw thieves stealing and dropping food and the hungry crowd rushed in hopes of getting some”.
Witkoff has been the top US representative in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas but talks in Doha broke down last week and Israel and the United States recalled their delegations.
Israel is under mounting international pressure to agree a ceasefire and allow the world to flood Gaza with food, with Canada and Portugal the latest Western governments to announce plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
Trump criticised Canada’s decision and, in a post on his Truth Social network, placed the blame for the crisis squarely on Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” declared Trump, one of Israel’s staunchest international supporters.
Earlier this week, however, the US President contradicted Netanyahu’s insistence that reports of hunger in Gaza were exaggerated, warning that the territory faces “real starvation”.
UN-backed experts have reported “famine is now unfolding” in Gaza, with images of sick and emaciated children drawing international outrage.
The US State Department said it would deny visas to officials from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank – the core of any future Palestinian state.
The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.
Of the 251 people seized, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 declared dead by the Israeli military.
The Israeli offensive, nearing its 23rd month, has killed at least 60,249 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry.
This week UN aid agencies said deaths from starvation had begun.
The civil defence agency said Israeli attacks across Gaza on Thursday killed at least 32 people.
“Enough!” cried Najah Aish Umm Fadi, who lost relatives in a strike on a camp for the displaced in central Gaza.
“We put up with being hungry, but now the death of children who had just been born?”
Further north, Amir Zaqot told AFP after getting his hands on some of the aid parachuted from planes, that “this is what death looks like. People are fighting each other with knives”.
“If the crossings were opened ... food could reach us. But this is nonsense,” Zaqot said of the airdrops.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP cannot independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence and other parties.
- Agence France-Presse