Trump warns of ‘real starvation' in Gaza as aid deliveries pick up
US food centres
The United States already backs food centres under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), but the group's high-security operations have been criticised after repeated incidents in which Israeli troops have reportedly fired on civilians near its distribution points.
Trump said the UK and European Union would back the new effort, and that the new food centres would be easier to access – 'where the people can walk in, and no boundaries'.
'It's crazy what's going on over there,' he added.
The war in Gaza has dragged on for almost 22 months, creating a dire humanitarian crisis only exacerbated by an Israeli blockade on supplies imposed from March to late May.
The easing of the blockade coincided with the beginning of the GHF's operations, which effectively sidelined Gaza's traditionally UN-led aid distribution system and have been criticised as grossly inadequate.
In recent days, the UN and humanitarian agencies have begun delivering more truckloads of food after the Israeli military declared a daily 'tactical pause' in the fighting and opened secure aid routes amid mounting international outrage over hunger in the territory.
Jamil Safadi said he had been getting up before dawn for two weeks to search for food, and Monday was his first success.
'For the first time, I received about five kilos of flour, which I shared with my neighbour,' said the 37-year-old, who shelters with his wife, six children and a sick father in a tent in Tel al-Hawa.
Other Gazans were less fortunate. Some complained aid trucks had been stolen or that guards had fired at them near US-backed distribution centres.
'I saw injured and dead people. People have no choice but to try daily to get flour. What entered from Egypt was very limited,' said 33-year-old Amir al-Rash.
Israel's new tactical pauses apply only to certain areas, and Gaza's civil defence agency reported 54 people killed in Israeli attacks on Monday (local time).
The Israeli Defence Ministry's civil affairs agency, COGAT, said the UN and aid organisations had been able to pick up 120 truckloads of aid on Sunday and distribute it inside Gaza, with more on the way on Monday.
Basic supplies
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have begun airdropping aid packages into Gaza, while Egypt has sent trucks through its Rafah border crossing to an Israeli post just inside the territory.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, cautiously welcomed Israel's recent moves but warned Gaza needed at least 500 to 600 trucks of basic food, medicine and hygiene supplies daily.
'Opening all the crossings and flooding Gaza with assistance is the only way to avert further deepening of starvation among the people of Gaza,' UNRWA said.
Netanyahu has denied Israel was deliberately starving civilians, but on Monday two local rights groups, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, accused the country of 'genocide' – a first for Israeli NGOs.
Israel has said the UN should quickly make use of the pauses in fighting and secure aid routes.
'More consistent collection and distribution by UN agencies and international organisations equals more aid reaching those who need it most in Gaza,' said COGAT.
But the amount of aid entering the territory still falls far short of what is needed, say experts, who have called for a permanent ceasefire, the reopening of more border crossings and a long-term, large-scale humanitarian operation.
'We're one-and-a-half days into these new measures. Saying whether or not it is making a difference on the ground will take time,' Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian agency, told AFP from Gaza, where the buzz of drones could be heard overhead.
'We know it's not perfect but we want to stay positive and we're seeing positive steps, because, for example, even the fact that all the requests to go and collect cargo yesterday were approved is already a step in the right direction.'
Indirect truce talks between Israel and Hamas – mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States – have faltered, and Netanyahu remains determined to push on with the campaign to destroy Hamas and recover Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 59,921 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
- Agence France-Presse
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
New Trump tariffs: early modelling shows most economies lose - the US more than many
By Niven Winchester of President Trump announced tariffs on 2 April, pauses them a week later, and on 31 July reinstated and expanded the policy. Photo: CHIP SOMODEVILLA / Getty Images via AFP President Donald Trump's 2 April "Liberation Day" announcement placed reciprocal tariffs on all countries. A week later, amid financial market turmoil, these tariffs were paused and replaced by a 10 percent baseline tariff on most goods. On 31 July, however, the Trump Administration and expanded the reciprocal tariff policy. Most of these updated tariffs are scheduled to take effect on August 7. To evaluate the impact of these latest tariffs , we also need to take into account recently negotiated free trade agreements (such as the US-European Union deal), the 50 percent tariffs imposed on steel and aluminium imports, and tariff exemptions for imports of smartphones, computers and other electronics. For selected countries, the reciprocal tariffs announced on 2 April and the revised values of these tariffs are shown in the table below. The revised additional tariffs are highest for Brazil (50 percent) and Switzerland (39 percent), and lowest for Australia and the United Kingdom (10 percent). For most countries, the revised tariffs are lower than the original ones. But Brazil, Switzerland and New Zealand are subject to higher tariffs than those announced in April. In addition to the tariffs displayed above, Canadian and Mexican goods not registered as compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement are subject to tariffs of 35 percent and 25 percent respectively. Economic impacts The economic impacts of the revised tariffs are examined using a global model of goods and services markets, covering production, trade and consumption. A similar model was used to assess the impacts of the original reciprocal tariffs and the outcome of a US-China trade war. GDP impacts of the tariffs are displayed in the table below. The impacts of the additional tariffs are evaluated relative to trade measures in place before Trump's second term. Retaliatory tariffs are not considered in the analysis. The tariffs reduce US annual GDP by 0.36 percent. This equates to US$108.2 billion or $861 per household per year (all amounts in this article are in US dollars). The change in US GDP is an aggregate of impacts involving several factors. The tariffs will compel foreign producers to lower their prices. But these price decreases only partially offset the cost of the tariffs, so US consumers pay higher prices. Businesses also pay more for parts and materials. Ultimately, these higher prices hurt the US economy. The tariffs decrease US merchandise imports by $486.7 billion. But as they drive up the cost of US supply chains and shift more workers and resources into industries that compete with imports, away from other parts of the economy, they also decrease US merchandise exports by $451.1 billion. For most other countries, the additional tariffs reduce GDP. Switzerland's GDP decreases by 0.47 percent, equivalent to $1,215 per household per year. Proportional GDP decreases are also relatively large for Thailand (0.44 percent) and Taiwan (0.38 percent). In dollar terms, GDP decreases are relatively large for China ($66.9 billion) and the European Union ($26.6 billion). Australia and the United Kingdom gain from the tariffs ($0.1 billion and $0.07 billion respectively), primarily due to the relatively low tariffs levied on these countries. Despite facing relatively low additional tariffs, New Zealand's GDP decreases by 0.15 percent ($204 per household) as many of its agricultural exports compete with Australian commodities, which are subject to an even lower tariff. Although the revised reciprocal tariffs are, on average, lower than those announced on 2 April, they are still a substantial shock to the global trading system. Financial markets have been buoyant since Trump paused reciprocal tariffs on 9 April, partly on the hope that the tariffs would never be imposed. US tariffs of at least 10 percent to 15 percent now appear to be the new norm. As US warehouses run down inventories and stockpiles, there could be a rocky road ahead. * Niven Winchester is Professor of Economics, Auckland University of Technology This story was first published by The Conversation
NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
The 109-year-old pact that looms over European moves to recognise a Palestinian state
To many Arabs, who view it as a great betrayal, it seeded a legacy of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East. The real-time crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip — the starving children, the Israeli restrictions on aid, the Palestinians killed as they try to collect food — undoubtedly had a greater impact on Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France than the stains of the past. Yet their momentous decisions have cast a light on the shadowy roles of both countries in a region where they once vied for influence. 'The history is so relevant,' said Eugene L. Rogan, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford in England. 'It shows there's always a chance for historical actors who screwed up in the past to make up for their mistakes.' Rogan praised the moves towards recognition for reasons both past and present. On its current course, he said, Israel was opening the door to unthinkable treatment of the Palestinians: expulsion from Gaza or worse. Recognising a Palestinian state does Israel a favour by opening the way to 'a form of cohabitation that is sustainable', he said. Speaking at the United Nations, the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, cited another century-old document in arguing that recognition would redress a historical injustice: the Balfour Declaration, issued a year after the signing of Sykes-Picot, which endorsed 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'. It had a proviso that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'. After 21 months of relentless Israeli attacks in Gaza, with the spectre of famine across the enclave, Lammy said that Britain had a responsibility to act on behalf of the territory's long-oppressed Palestinian population. 'His argument is that it's time to make good on the second half of that promise,' said Rogan, whose books include The Arabs: A History. 'At the time of the Balfour had a worldwide empire, which in 1917, they could not imagine losing. David Lammy is operating in a postcolonial, post-EU Britain. But he's using history as a legitimating factor.' Lammy said that Britain could be proud that it 'helped lay the foundations for a homeland for the Jewish people'. Yet the country's motive in backing what later became Israel was less moral than strategic, Rogan said. It was seeking a client community in Palestine that would prevent the territory from falling into enemy hands. London feared the territory could be used as a launchpad for attacks on the Suez Canal, which was then controlled by Britain. Moreover, Britain backed away from its pro-Zionist stance as it found it hard to reconcile a Jewish state with preserving relations with the Arab world. In a later document, the White Paper of 1939, Britain proposed that the Jewish homeland would be created within a majority-Arab Palestinian state and that Jewish immigration to Palestine be limited to 75,000 for five years. 'Israel was not created because of the Balfour Declaration; it was created in spite of the Balfour Declaration,' said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli American historian who served as Israel's ambassador to Washington and later as a deputy minister in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Oren argued that the decisions of Britain and France to recognise a state would not hasten an end to the conflict in Gaza but prolong it. By offering this concession to the Palestinians now, he said, the West had given Hamas even less incentive to agree to a ceasefire. He chalked it up to a bid for relevance by two postcolonial powers. 'These are former Middle Eastern powers that want to feel like Middle Eastern powers,' said Oren, who wrote Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. 'There's a pathetic quality to it.' Others argue that if these moves had no impact, they would not have drawn the furious reactions they did from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. The addition of Britain and France — plus Canada and Malta, which said last week that they, too, would back recognition at the United Nations General Assembly in September — means that more than three-quarters of the UN's 193 member states will have recognised a Palestinian state. France had a less direct stake in Palestine than Britain did after ceding its claims in the Sykes-Picot treaty. But its move towards Palestinian recognition represents another fateful turn in its relationship with Israel. From 1945 to 1967, France was Israel's biggest backer in the West. Part of that was rooted in its wrenching experience with decolonisation. In 1954, France faced an anti-colonial uprising in Algeria, where the nationalists were backed by Egypt's nationalist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. France, viewing Israel as a bulwark against Nasser, drew close, supplying the country with Mirage fighter planes and nuclear technology that became the foundation of its undeclared nuclear weapons programme. But in 1967, days before Israel launched a military strike against Egypt, de Gaulle, then France's president, imposed an arms embargo on Israel and shifted his gaze to the Arab states. Gérard Araud, who served as France's ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006, said that rupture cast a long shadow. 'I felt there was always a sense of 'Don't trust the French,'' he recalled. By supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the United States had in any case supplanted France as its No. 1 ally. France went on to become the first Western country to develop close ties to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which represents Palestinians internationally and is led by the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The decision to recognise a Palestinian state nevertheless carries significant political risk for Macron, Araud said. France has both the largest Jewish and the largest Muslim communities in Western Europe. It has been scarred by a string of Islamist terrorist attacks. In recognising Palestinian statehood, historians said, France and Britain would do well to recognise their diminished sway over a region they once ruled. Such recognition was sorely lacking for decades after the authors of Sykes-Picot divvied up the Middle East, with lasting consequences. 'Neither country understood that the age of colonialism was over,' Araud said. 'They behaved as if they were still all powerful. It's not the most glorious page of history for either country.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Mark Landler Photographs by: Saher Alghorra ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
NZ Herald
2 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Court suspends Israeli govt's sacking of attorney general
The Israeli Cabinet voted unanimously to dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, only for a court to immediately suspend the move. Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced the Cabinet's decision and addressed a letter to Baharav-Miara saying she 'should not try to impose herself
