US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Gaza on Friday amid growing international concern and criticism regarding the current US- and Israel-backed aid distribution system.
Witkoff said he spent five hours inside Gaza on Friday, “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions and meeting with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”
He tweeted: “The purpose of the visit was to give US President Donald Trump a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
Witkoff also visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where he placed a note and signed the guest book, saying “I pray for the hostages!! And an end to the war,” according to Hebrew media.
Huckabee, who accompanied Witkoff on the visit, called the joint US- and Israeli-backed initiative “an incredible feat.”
Sharing photos from the visit, Huckabee wrote on his official X account that the two senior US officials entered Gaza “to learn the truth about [GHF] aid sites,” which have sparked controversy over their failure to significantly alleviate the humanitarian crisis and over repeated reports of deadly IDF shootings of civilians near distribution points.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff (2nd left) and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (3rd left) tour a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site on August 1, 2025. (Mike Huckabee/X)
“We received briefings from [the IDF] and spoke to folks on the ground. GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!” Huckabee said.
In a since-deleted tweet, he claimed Gazans “love Trump,” The Telegraph reported.
Huckabee claimed Palestinians fondly refer to “one of the few” remaining six-story buildings in Rafah as “Trump Tower.” He also said, “They love @realDonaldTrump & believe he is helping.”
US special envoy Steve Witkoff (C) and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee tour a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site on August 1, 2025. (Mike Huckabee/X)
On his personal X account, Huckabee added: “Hamas hates GHF [because] it gets food to [people without] it being looted by Hamas. Over 100 MILLION meals served in 2 months.”
This morning I joined @SEPeaceMissions Steve Witkoff for a visit to Gaza to learn the truth about @GHFUpdates aid sites. We received briefings from @IDF and spoke to folks on the ground. GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat! pic.twitter.com/GyVK5cwNgZ
— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@USAmbIsrael) August 1, 2025
Meanwhile, while speaking about Gaza, US President Donald Trump told the Axios news site on Friday that he was working on a plan to “get people fed.”
“We want to help people. We want to help them live,” he said. “It is something that should have happened a long time ago.”
He declined to provide details on the new humanitarian plan that the White House said it would announce shortly. It is unclear whether it will simply amount to the expansion of the GHF or the creation of a new mechanism entirely.
He said he had not yet been briefed by Witkoff on his visit, but said that he was “doing great work.”
Asked about an Israeli official’s assertion on Thursday that the US and Israel have agreed to pursue a comprehensive plan to end the Gaza war and free the hostages after talks on a phased framework hit another impasse last week, Trump responded, “You will see soon.”
President Donald Trump speaks during an event for the signing of an executive order restarting the Presidential Fitness Test in public schools, Thursday, July 31, 2025, in the White House. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
During a phone call with the news site, Trump accused Hamas of stealing and selling aid entering Gaza.
Earlier Friday, Trump told NBC he hoped Israel would manage aid in a way that would prevent Hamas from stealing aid intended for hungry civilians.
Trump called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a competent person,” while stressing: “We want to make sure people get fed.”
“Good management,” he said, will prevent the theft of aid.
Trump was also asked by reporters earlier Friday whether he agreed with Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s characterization of Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide.
“It’s terrible what’s occurring there. It’s a terrible thing. People are very hungry,” Trump responded.
He reiterated his claim that the US has given $60 million to the controversial GHF, when it has only given $30 million thus far.
“The United States gave $60 million for food, and it’s a shame because I don’t see the results of it. We gave it to people who, in theory, are watching over it fairly closely. We wanted Israel to watch over it. Part of the problem is that Hamas is taking the money and they’re taking the food,” he said again.
UN, Human Rights Watch condemn death toll at aid sites
Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said 11 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes Friday, including two who were waiting near an aid distribution site inside the Palestinian territory.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike near the southern city of Khan Younis, and four more in a separate strike on a vehicle in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
The army told AFP it could not confirm the strikes without specific coordinates.
Two other people were killed and more than 70 were injured by Israeli fire while waiting for aid near a food distribution center run by the GHF between Khan Younis and the nearby city of Rafah, the civil defense agency said.
Palestinians carry humanitarian aid in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, July 31, 2025. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
The army did not immediately respond to the report.
Amid rising mass casualty events near the aid distribution sites, the UN human rights office said that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the shortage-stricken Strip since late May, most of them by the IDF, AP reported Friday.
“In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of [GHF] sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement.
“Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
The IDF has repeatedly said it has fired warning shots at crowds approaching troops in a manner that threatened them, while maintaining that claims of casualties are inflated — without providing its own figures.
Netanyahu and the IDF have strenuously rejected allegations of intentional starvation in the Strip, as well as the claim of widespread, famine-level hunger, as it has instituted new measures, including 10-hour pauses in fighting throughout large swaths of the Strip, to boost aid distribution in the territory.
A report was also released Friday by Human Rights Watch accusing Israeli forces operating outside US-backed aid centers of routinely killing Palestinian civilians seeking food, as well as using starvation as a weapon of war.
“US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.
Nasma Ayad fans her daughter, Jana Ayad, who is malnourished, according to medics, as she receives treatment at a hospital in Gaza City, amid a worsening hunger crisis, July 29, 2025. (REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa)
Israel blocked the entry of all aid into the Strip between March and May of this year as a ceasefire with Hamas collapsed. At the time, the government estimated that enough aid had already accumulated to meet the population’s needs for months, and asserted that allowing more in would strengthen the hand of Hamas, which still holds 50 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
GHF launched its operations in late May, sidelining the longstanding UN-led humanitarian system just as Israel was beginning to ease the more than two-month aid blockade.
Since then, witnesses, the Hamas-run civil defense agency, and foreign correspondents inside Gaza have reported frequent incidents in which Israeli troops have opened fire on crowds of desperate Palestinian civilians approaching GHF centers seeking food.
“Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,” HRW’s Wille said in a statement.
The military did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on the HRW report.
In a bid to alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, aircraft from Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and, for the first time in over a year, Spain, Germany, and France airdropped humanitarian aid packages over the Gaza Strip on Friday.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that France was sending four flights carrying 10 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza from Jordan.
#عاجل | إسقاط جوي لمساعدات إماراتية غرب النصيرات وسط القطاع. pic.twitter.com/ilozl38F2s
— قناة القدس (@livequds) August 1, 2025
“This is emergency aid, but still not sufficient” in the face of this “revolting” situation, Barrot told broadcaster Franceinfo.
The IDF has not yet commented on Friday’s airdrops, but has previously said they are part of a “series of actions aimed at improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
