US trying to ‘whitewash’ and ‘accelerate’ Israel’s starvation of Gaza
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, has told Al Jazeera that the visit by US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff visit to an aid site in Gaza run by the controversial GHF organisation on Friday was “perhaps a new low” as it tried to “whitewash” Israel’s deliberate starvation of the Strip.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who travelled with Witkoff to Gaza, posted on X a picture showing hungry people behind razor wire with a GHF poster displaying a big US flag and the words “100,000,000 meals delivered”.
More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in and around GHF sites in recent weeks amid repeated Israeli attacks, and aid organisations have said that the amount of food provided at these sites is well below what Gaza’s starving population requires.
“Dozens of governments and aid organisations over the past several weeks have criticised this aid scheme that Israel and the United States have set up, and importantly, there have been a couple of American whistleblowers who have come forth recently,” Elmasry said.
“In that context, the United States had a choice – they could have come clean. They didn’t necessarily have to condemn Israel, no one is expecting that, but they could have said things aren’t going well and we need to address that,” he added.
“Instead of doing that, which would have been the bare minimum, they’re trying to whitewash the deliberate starvation programme and accelerate it so that Israel can complete the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.”
Witkoff did not meet any United Nations staff during trip to Gaza, UN spokesperson says
The deputy spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general has said that, “as far as he was aware”, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Wikoff did not meet anyone from the United Nations during his visit to Gaza on Friday.
“I checked with all the various offices and agencies, and none of them have replied about any meeting,” Farhan Haq told Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo during a news conference in New York.
Haq said that Witkoff, who visited an aid site run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed GHF in southern Gaza, could certainly also have visited UN workers and facilities if he had requested a meeting.
“We trust and expect that the US officials will continue to be in touch with us. We certainly have made clear what our operations on the ground are, and we’ve been in touch with them, as with other [UN] member states,” Haq said.
The UN has repeatedly criticised the GHF for being unable to provide aid on the scale required to hunger-ravaged Gaza, for violating basic humanitarian principles, and for the dire security at and around its aid sites, where more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
