As Gaza starvation shocks the world, Witkoff is in Israel to push for a ceasefire deal 

The U.S. envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday, reportedly to push for concluding a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Witkoff is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and will possibly visit U.S. and Israel-backed distribution centers run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which Palestinians have described as “death traps” where over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army.

Witkoff’s visit comes a day after Israel gave Egyptian and Qatari mediators its objections to Hamas’s recent response to the latest Witkoff proposal. The objections were over Hamas’s condition that the Israeli army withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor — the militarized area straddling the Palestinian-Egyptian border — and the principle of exchanging bodies of slain Israeli captives for living Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas had handed its response to Witkoff’s proposal last week to mediators, which Israeli officials told Israeli media and Axios was “better” than Hamas’s previous response and “could be built upon.”  Hamas had submitted revised Israeli military withdrawal maps that included areas like the Philadelphi Corridor and proposed a split in aid distribution between the UN and the GHF. Following Hamas’s response, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff announced that the U.S. was pulling out of the ceasefire talks, followed by declarations by U.S. President Trump announcing that the talks had collapsed and that Hamas “wanted to die.”

Although it remained unclear what part of the Hamas response provoked this kind of U.S. reaction, it came as a surprise, considering that Israeli officials had reportedly described it as workable. 

Notably, Israel’s objections, handed to mediators last Tuesday, did not include Hamas’s amendments to the aid distribution mechanism.

Global shock at Gaza famine

Israel’s omission of its previous objections to Hamas’s aid distribution amendments comes amid an unprecedented wave of international outrage over Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 27 Palestinians in the last week alone, raising the total number of Palestinians dying of hunger in the Strip since October 2023 to 122, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The mounting international criticism even reached the U.S. president himself, who admitted on Tuesday that “you can’t fake that,” describing the situation in Gaza as “real starvation.” Trump’s statements followed the explicit condemnation of Israel’s policies by 25 countries, including France, the UK, and Canada.

Meanwhile, Israel allowed the entry of hundreds of aid trucks into the Strip, as well as airdrops of food by neighboring countries and its own military. The airdrops have been criticized by Gazans as unsafe, with plummeting aid crates killing several Palestinians in previous attempts, while UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said on Tuesday that the aid allowed now entering the Strip was “a drop” that must “turn into an ocean.”

Simultaneously, Israeli forces continued to open fire on Palestinian aid-seekers who attempted to reach the recent aid trucks, according to Palestinian reports. On Wednesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces opened fire on aid-seekers who tried to access a food truck that had been allowed into the Strip in the Sudaniyeh neighborhood in north Gaza, killing at least 51 and wounding over 600. Al Jazeera Mubasher aired video footage of dozens of slain and wounded Palestinians from the incident strewn across the morgue floor of what remains of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the number of aid-seekers killed by Israeli forces has risen to 1,300.

As ceasefire talks are expected to resume following Witkoff’s visit to the region, the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot revealed on Thursday that PM Netanyahu had reportedly told his ally on the religious right, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, that if a deal wasn’t reached with Hamas in the coming days he would direct the army to displace thousands of Palestinians from the Strip, a promise Netanyahu allegedly made to persuade Ben-Gvir not to quit the government coalition over ceasefire talks.

Yediot also reported that Israel was actively negotiating with five countries to accept Palestinians from Gaza, including Libya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.