President Trump said on Friday that “a lot of people are starving” in the Gaza Strip under an Israeli blockade preventing aid deliveries, adding that the U.S. wanted to help alleviate the suffering.
“We’re going to handle a couple of situations that you have here,” Mr. Trump said, speaking in the United Arab Emirates on the last leg of his visit to three Persian Gulf nations this week. “We’re looking at Gaza, and we got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving. A lot of people. There’s a lot of bad things going on.”
Aid groups have warned for weeks that the population of Gaza is on the brink of famine, and some Israeli military officials have begun to privately express concerns over the risk of starvation in the territory, 19 months after the war there began.
On top of the siege it has imposed on Gaza for more than two months, Israel has escalated its military campaign in recent days. Strikes on Friday killed more than 100 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, a day after Israeli bombardment forced the closure of one of the enclave’s major hospitals. The Gaza authorities do not distinguish between civilians and militants when issuing death tolls.
Late Friday, the Israeli military said that its forces had begun mobilizing to seize positions in the Gaza Strip as part of “preparations to expand operations.” The military said that it had conducted extensive strikes in Gaza over the past day, but it was not immediately clear whether Israeli troops had advanced farther into the Palestinian enclave. Hamas had no immediate comment.
The Trump administration has remained largely silent on Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, but Gulf Arab leaders who met with Mr. Trump during his trip to the region this week seized on the opportunity to address that issue, among others. They scored a remarkable turnaround in U.S. policy when the president announced on the first day of the visit that he would lift sanctions on Syria.
