US President Donald Trump said Monday that he is “not particularly convinced” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assurance that there is no starvation in Gaza, and later asserted there was “real starvation” in the Strip, adding: “You can’t fake that.”

Trump’s comments, along with promises to set up “food centers” in the Strip, came amid global condemnations of Israel for the humanitarian situation in the enclave, after images circulated last week of emaciated children in the war-torn territory.

Israel has said there is no widespread famine in Gaza, asserting that the photos are of isolated cases or are misleading, but started yesterday to pause all fighting in large swathes of the Strip for 10 hours each day, while facilitating a surge of aid by land and air.

Taking questions from reporters at his golf resort in Scotland, Trump was asked whether he was convinced by the Israeli premier’s insistence that “there is no starvation in Gaza.”

“Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry,” he said, standing alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and wife Victoria, ahead of a meeting between the two leaders.

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Starmer was far more forceful: “I think people in Britain are revolted at seeing what they are seeing on their screens,” he said, though he also said that Hamas can play no part in any future Palestinian government.

Starmer, who is facing domestic pressure to follow France in declaring that the UK will recognize a Palestinian state, described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “absolutely intolerable.”

“We need to galvanize other countries in support of getting that aid in, and, yes, that does involve putting pressure on Israel, because it absolutely is a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.

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Asked whether there was more Israel could do, Trump said as well: “I think Israel can do a lot.” He added that, when next speaking to Netanyahu, he would tell him “I want him to make sure they get the food. I want to make sure they get the food, every ounce of food.”

The US president bemoaned Hamas’s commandeering of much of the aid that has gone into the Strip, saying: “We’ve given a lot of money to Gaza for food and everything else. A lot of that money is stolen by Hamas, and a lot of the food is stolen.”

Trump: ‘That’s real starvation, I see it. You can’t fake that’

Later, after his meeting with Starmer, Trump said: “The United States will be helping with food. We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff, I see it. You can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.”

The president said the US would “set up food centers, and we’re going to do it in conjunction with some very good people,” together with the UK and “all of the European nations, joining us.”

Trump said the new “food centers” would have “no boundaries,” and people will be able to just “walk in.”

“We’re not going to have fences where they see the food from 30 yards away, and they see the food, it’s all there, but nobody’s at it because they have fences set up, that no one can even get it. It’s crazy what’s going on over there,” he said of the current situation.

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After blocking all aid from entering the Strip between March and May, Israel relied heavily on the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was created to avoid aid being diverted to Hamas, for subsequent distribution.

However, GHF sites have seen near-daily incidents in which IDF troops have shot at Gazans, in what the military has presented as deadly crowd control incidents. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 1,000 people have been killed near the GHF sites, though Israel says the toll is exaggerated.

Trump also addressed the failure of negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach a temporary ceasefire and release of some of the hostages.

Netanyahu repeatedly has said that Israel will only end the war if Hamas is disarmed and exiled, while Hamas has refused to agree to a third ceasefire and hostage release unless it leads to a permanent end of the war — presumably with the group returning to power as the Strip’s de facto government.

Trump: Hamas ‘don’t want to give hostages’

Trump said that Hamas does not want a ceasefire deal, and, as a result, Israel must fight differently in Gaza.

“They have totally changed now,” he said of Hamas. “They don’t want to give hostages.”

Trump said that the Hamas representatives “were really unwilling to talk” during recent negotiations in Doha, and asserted that Iran had “interjected themselves” in the talks.

“I think they got involved in this negotiation, telling Hamas and giving Hamas signals and orders. And that’s not good,” he said.

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“We got a tremendous amount of hostages out. But it would take place in drips and drabs,” Trump said, referring to the previous two hostage-ceasefire deals.

“But I always said when you come when you get down to the final 10 or 20, you’re not going to be able to make a deal with these people because they use them as a shield. And when they give them up, they no longer have a shield,” he said.

Twenty hostages held by terror groups in Gaza are believed to still be alive, along with the bodies of 28 hostages who have been confirmed dead, and two hostages about whom Israel has expressed “grave concern.”

“Now, possibly, the fight will have to be a little bit different,” he said, adding that he told Netanyahu, “You’re going to have to now maybe do it a different way,” and that the two leaders were discussing “various plans.”

“If they didn’t have the hostages, things would go very quickly, but they do. And we know where they have them in some cases. And you don’t want to go riding roughshod over that area because that means those hostages will be killed,” Trump told reporters.

Israel started operations in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, earlier this month, after avoiding the area for the first 20 months of the war, due to concerns that hostages were being held there.

“Now, there are some people that would say, ‘Well, that’s the price you pay.’ But we don’t like to say that. We don’t want to say that. And I don’t think the people of Israel want to say that either, which is pretty amazing,” Trump said.

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Trump’s comments were echoed by US Vice President JD Vance, who told reporters: “I don’t know if you’ve all seen these images. You have got some really, really heartbreaking cases. You’ve got little kids who are clearly starving to death.”

“Israel’s got to do more to let that aid in,” he stressed. “And we’ve also got to wage war on Hamas so that those folks stop preventing food from coming into this territory.”

Vance said the US wants to make sure Palestinian civilians in Gaza get food, while adding that it also wants to ensure that Hamas “gets the hell out of Gaza.”

Israel’s negotiators in ‘constant contact’ with mediators

Despite the apparent break down in hostage talks, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel on Monday that Israel’s hostage negotiating team remained “constant contact” with Egypt and Qatar, which are in touch with Hamas.

A diplomat based in the Gulf, meanwhile, told Haaretz that Hamas surprised Israel and the mediators by demanding the release of 30 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences for each of the living Israeli hostages, instead of 20.

Israel released 30 lifers and 20 other Palestinian prisoners in January to free five Israeli female surveillance soldiers.

“It’s not over yet, and it hasn’t blown up,” the diplomat said, referring to talks between Israel and Hamas.

Israel recalled its negotiating team for consultations after Hamas gave its answer to a Qatari ceasefire proposal on Thursday.

At the same time, an Israeli team has been in Cairo for the last two weeks, discussing the humanitarian aid influx into Gaza that started in recent days, an Egyptian diplomat told The Times of Israel.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi issued an impassioned call on Monday for Trump to intervene to put an end to the fighting in Gaza, saying, “The time has come to end the war.”

In a video address, Sissi said Trump “is the one capable of stopping the war, bringing in aid, and ending this suffering.”

“Therefore, I am making a special appeal to His Excellency President Trump: Please make every effort to stop the war and bring in aid.”

Germany declines to take steps against Israel, for now

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday, after a meeting of his security cabinet, that there was no decision to take any measures against Israel, after his office previously said Berlin was ready to ramp up pressure over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“For now, we want to await the foreign minister’s trip and the talks that will be held with the Israeli government in the coming days,” he said. “However, we reserve the right to take such steps.“

German FM Johann Wadephul is slated to be in Israel on Thursday.

Merz did say, however, that Germany would organize an airlift of humanitarian aid to the Strip, adding that Berlin will work with Paris and London on the initiative.

Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates have airdropped aid to Gaza in recent days, and Spain has said it plans to do so later this week.

Yair Lapid: Israel could face sanctions over Gaza ‘disaster’

In Israel, too, the government came under denunciation for its handling of the war.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid told reporters at a Tel Aviv press conference that Netanyahu’s government has “failed in the war in Gaza,” stating that his assessment is based on “intelligence and operational information” shared with him by virtue of his position.

“It’s a total disaster. This is a strategic failure which is leading to an operational and political failure,” he said, adding that “the Israeli government no longer knows why soldiers continue to die in Gaza.”

If the war is not ended immediately, the hostages would not return home, Israeli soldiers would continue to be killed, and the “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza would get even worse, he warned.

Lapid insisted that there is an alternative, however, calling for a comprehensive hostage deal, after which Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza and continue the “work of eliminating Hamas” from the perimeter of the Palestinian enclave.

Civil governance would be taken over by “a coalition of moderate Arab countries led by Egypt,” he added.

“Only the Netanyahu government refuses to discuss the question of how the war will end. It has not presented any plan, any political vision. A government that is not even willing to mobilize the ultra-Orthodox is a government that does not really want to win and cannot really win.”

Turning to the humanitarian situation, Lapid insists that “the management of humanitarian aid in Gaza has collapsed” and that Israel “needs to make sure that there is no hunger in Gaza,” both out of pragmatic considerations and because such a policy is in line with Jewish values.

Lapid warns that “economic and legal sanctions” against Israel could be implemented, while anybody who fought “will have to hope that they are not arrested the moment they leave Israel’s borders.”

The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.

They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in Gaza in 2014.

Sam Sokol contributed to this report.

Australia will recognize a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announces, in a quick about-face after saying two weeks ago that he didn’t plan to imminently make such a move.

“Australia will recognize the right of the Palestinian people to a state of their own predicated on the commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority. We will work with the international community to make this right a reality,” he says following a cabinet meeting, framing the move as “part of a coordinated global effort building momentum for a two-state solution.”

He says Hamas may take no part in such a state, but argues that Israel “continues to defy” international law, with the situation in Gaza “beyond the world’s worst dreams.”

The move is “predicated on commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority,” Albanese says, adding that those commitments include no role for Hamas in a Palestinian government, demilitarization of Gaza and the holding of elections — which haven’t been held since 2006.

He also says the PA has pledged to affirm Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and to hold substantial reforms, including international oversight to prevent incitement and abolishing a payment system for Palestinian security prisoners and families of dead assailants, including terrorists, which is known as “pay for slay.”

“A two-state solution is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,” Albanese says.

He adds that over the past two weeks, he has spoken on the matter with the leaders of Britain, France, New Zealand and Japan, as well as with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Albanese says his call with Netanyahu was civil and relatively long, adding that “the arguments that he put to me were very similar to the arguments that he put more than a year ago. It seems to me very clearly and I put the argument to him that we need a political solution — not a military one.”

Ahead of Albanese’s announcement, Netanyahu on Sunday criticized Australia and other European countries that have moved to recognize a Palestinian state.

“To have European countries and Australia march into that rabbit hole … this canard is disappointing and I think it’s actually shameful,” he said.

The development follows weeks of urging from within Albanese’s cabinet and from pro-Palestinian activists in Australia to recognize a Palestinian state and amid growing criticism from officials in his government over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Australia’s government has also criticized plans announced in recent days by Netanyahu for a new military offensive aimed at conquering Gaza City.

Hamas negotiators in Cairo this week signaled a willingness to come down from demands they made last month that led to the collapse of hostage talks in Doha, an Israeli official and an Arab diplomat familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Friday.

Arab mediators passed along the development to Israel, but Jerusalem responded that it is not interested in another partial ceasefire and is only willing to forgo plans to take over Gaza City if Hamas agrees to all of its demands for ending the war, the Israeli official said.

Those demands include the release of all 50 remaining hostages, the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

But the gaps on those issues are very wide, particularly regarding the disarmament of Hamas, with the Arab mediators believing that it is a “poison pill” designed to blow up the talks, as it will likely require ongoing intensive Israeli military operations in Gaza in order to verify that it is being upheld, the Arab diplomat said.

Instead, the Arab mediators prefer a gradual approach to dealing with Hamas’s weapons, akin to the system that is in place in Lebanon. Arab countries are willing to contribute troops to this effort, provided it is at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority, the diplomat recalled.

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But another of Israel’s conditions for ending the war is that the PA be barred from any governance role in Gaza, effectively preventing the Arab initiative from moving forward.

Despite opposition from Jerusalem, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are planning to resume talks with Hamas on Saturday with the aim of getting the terror group’s final approval on an updated proposal that is far closer to the one that the United States and Israel authorized last month.

While this has been characterized as a partial deal, the Arab diplomat stressed that it still has the potential to turn into a permanent ceasefire if the sides hold successful negotiations during the envisioned 60-day truce. During that two-month period, 10 living hostages and 18 bodies will be released in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian security prisoners.

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The US and Israel pulled their negotiators out of Doha last month due to frustration over Hamas’s demands regarding the scope of the Israeli military’s withdrawal from Gaza, the humanitarian aid mechanisms that will be in place during the truce and the number of Palestinian security prisoners it was demanding, the Israeli official said.

If Hamas gives its final approval of a softened proposal that comes down from those demands in the coming days, the mediators will present it to Israel, forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decide whether to retreat from his declarations that he will no longer accept partial deals.

If he agrees to walk back those assertions, the sides will still have to hold another round of talks to agree on the Palestinian security prisoners to be released in the deal, the Arab diplomat clarified.

The Israeli official said that the security establishment will likely urge the political leadership to take the deal, as it will secure the release of at least 10 living hostages, whereas taking over Gaza City will risk the lives of some of those captives, with no guarantee that the military pressure will lead Hamas to capitulate.

Netanyahu currently feels that Hamas is buying time by expressing interest to mediators in a partial deal when it is not actually serious and that only military pressure will secure the release of all remaining hostages, the Israeli official added.

Meanwhile, Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu received a “dramatic” document from who the network dubbed as a “professional” source involved in the negotiations, expressing in writing Hamas’s willingness to reach a partial deal after the terror group long insisted that it would only release additional hostages in exchange for an up-front Israeli commitment for a permanent ceasefire.

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While Hamas appeared to forgo that demand earlier this summer, its subsequent demands were rejected by Israel and the US, leading to the talks’ collapse.

The Arab diplomat argued that Israel raised new demands of its own in June relating to the scope of its withdrawal that led the talks to drag out before the US eventually convinced Netanyahu to come down from them. But by then, Hamas came back with new demands of its own, and the window of opportunity for a deal was missed, the diplomat said.

The remaining captives held by terror organizations in Gaza include 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Humanitarian aid supplies are airdropped by military cargo planes over the western part of Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on Monday. Anadolu/Getty Images

In the central Gazan town of Al-Zawayda, scores of Palestinians rushed to collect boxes of aid that were dropped from the sky on Monday.

For many, the food in these boxes will be the only meal they eat today. But many say that having no choice but to chase after airdropped aid is an insult to their dignity.

“This aid is disgraceful. We are not dogs to be made to run after aid,” Ahmad Faiz Fayyad told CNN. “We’d rather die of hunger with dignity than die in humiliation and filth.”

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates carried out their first airdrops into Gaza over the weekend, attempting to combat starvation in the enclave caused by Israel’s blockade.

“The people doing this have no shame,” said Fayyad. “We want the aid to come in by land and be distributed through institutions, so that people can receive it with dignity and honor.”

Fayyad said he did not collect any aid and did not want to, while dozens of others scrambled to reach the UAE Red Crescent-marked boxes. As a crowd of people picked up the boxes from the ground, gunshots rang out, causing many to panic and flee, CNN video showed.

One man said he managed to collect some flour, but that it would not be enough to feed his family of eight. Another elderly woman said she hadn’t managed to reach the food because she was almost crushed in the crowd.

Others were grateful to receive food, but said the method of airdropping aid only risked more violence.

“I took this box, thank God. It will help ease the hunger we’re facing. Praise be to God and thank you to everyone who helped us,” Mohammad Al-Bara’a told CNN.

“This is enough for us, but you can see and hear what’s happening—people are fighting to the death over aid. There are no words to describe what you’re seeing.”

The United Nations has warned that airdropping aid into Gaza is “very, very expensive” and often dangerous.

“Why use airdrops when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders,” Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees, told CNN last week. “It’s much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper and safer.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hails Israel’s fight against “savagery” and “barbarism,” condemning what he calls pro-Hamas sentiment on American college campuses and alleged atrocities committed against the Druze minority in Syria last month.

During his opening remarks at a Jerusalem event hosted by the Newsmax news outlet, Netanyahu says that “some have fallen victim” to Hamas propaganda — “to these lies, and have followed them, and swallowed hook, line and sinker” — echoing criticism he voiced at a press conference for foreign media earlier this week.

Despite Hamas’s record of brutal acts of terrorism, he says, many students on American campuses “are siding with Hamas” by embracing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel movements.

Addressing prominent American lawyer and academic Alan Dershowitz, who is present in the audience, Netanyahu asks: “Can you say something in their defense right now? No. Yeah, I figured. Neither can I, because I think it’s atrocious.”

Netanyahu stresses that “most Americans [recognize] that Israel stands for the same values as America,” adding: “They recognize that we are fighting the barbarians at the gate.” He also thanks US President Donald Trump for being “a great ally.”

“It’s not only the savagery of Hamas and the Iranian terror axis. In Syria, just a few weeks ago, we stopped the savage massacre of the Druze,” Netanyahu continues, referring to last month’s deadly attacks in and around the southern Syrian city of Sweida, a Druze stronghold, where sectarian clashes with local Bedouin drew in Syrian regime forces and IDF intervention.

“They went into their town of Sweida, and they butchered the men,” Netanyahu says, without clarifying which assailants he refers to. “They raped the women, the nurses, and then shot them. They burnt babies, and they added a few things,” Netanyahu says.

Referencing a widely circulated video purportedly from the attack, he continues: “You saw it live, and you have to see it to understand this. I mean, you see a Druze civilian wounded, lying on the ground. And one of these fanatics, these unbelievable savages, they go in, knife the guy, tear out his heart, and then eat it. The victim has his heart eaten while he’s still alive. This is savagery. This is barbarism. This is what Israel is fighting on behalf of Western civilization, on behalf of civilization.”

“But we now have to muster all the forces that seek to defend our common civilization against this mutilation of the truth that threatens our common future,” Netanyahu concludes.