How Food Supplies in Gaza Have Dwindled Under the New Israeli Aid Plan – The Wall Street Journal
How did your country report this? Share your view in the comments.
Diverging Reports Breakdown
June 12: Reports: US told Israel it will not provide offensive support for Iran strike
Huckabee cast doubt on reports that US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week not to attack Iran. “I just don’t in my mind see that that would be something that would likely happen because of the closeness of the relationship and the trust,” says the former governor and Baptist minister. Huckabee blasts Western partners for “putting more pressure on Israel than they’re putting on Hamas,’ he says of the Gaza war. He calls the French-Saudi United Nations on Palestinian statehood next week “ridiculously ill-timed” and “an incredibly worthless, worthless entity that is going after Israelis’ lives.’’ “We don”t want to tell Israel what it should do and how it should create communities in Judea and Samaria, he says, using the Israeli name for the West Bank. ‘We have been very clear, and this goes to the first Trump administration, that developing in Judean communities is not a violation of international law,’ he adds.
“I won’t be making that decision,” says the former governor and Baptist minister. “I just don’t in my mind see that that would be something that would likely happen because of the closeness of the relationship and the trust, and that’s the word I would emphasize, there is a trust between the US and Israel.”
Huckabee cast doubt on reports that US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week not to attack Iran: “I can’t say that the president gave any instructions. I know they’ve had many conversations and they’ve discussed all aspects, but it would not be like the president to give instructions to the prime minister any more than it would be typical that the prime minister would give instructions to the president.”
Trump will not agree to a JCPOA 2.0 deal in nuclear talks with Iran, insists Huckabee.
“He was the president who tore up the first one,” he says, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal spearheaded by the Barack Obama administration. “I think the last thing he would have any interest in doing would be to embrace an Obama policy that was a total failure and one that he rejected as soon as he got in office.”
“The president made very clear that Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon, that Iran isn’t going to have any enrichment, and I don’t know how much clearer he could get than he was,” Huckabee adds.
He also says that reports that Trump is frustrated with Netanyahu are “simply not the case.”
“The relationship is, I believe, rock solid.”
Turning to the Gaza war, Huckabee blasts Western partners for “putting more pressure on Israel than they’re putting on Hamas.”
He blames Hamas for the continuation of the war by refusing to surrender, while stressing that the terror organization cannot be allowed to stay in power in Gaza: “Leaving Hamas in power and letting them rule Gaza for the same way that World War II could not end, leaving the Nazis in Germany and letting them continue to rule the place. Plus, that is the message the president has sent us here with Hamas can’t stay.”
“Hamas is not gonna have a role,” Huckabee continues, “so I don’t think there’s any difference of opinion between the president, the prime minister on what it has to look like at the end.”
Despite violence and chaos at distribution sites, Huckabee doubles down on support for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund: “It’s getting better every day. We learn something new every day, and how it’s being carried out. We’re getting greater levels of security, pushing the food further inward to the people who are receiving it, so it’s easier for them to get it. Hamas is doing everything it can to disrupt the flow of the food, and that’s the piece of this that isn’t getting reported.”
He adds that the US is “very frustrated with the fact that the UN has been screaming to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, and then when we created an organization to do that very thing, they’ve sat on their hands.”
He calls the French-Saudi United Nations on Palestinian statehood next week “ridiculously ill-timed.”
“This was in the midst of a war, for heaven’s sakes, that they, they’re facing threats on all sides,” he says of Israel. “You would think that if European countries have time and energy to put pressure on anyone, anything for any purpose, they would say, Hamas, we’re putting all the pressure on you.”
Huckabee says that Washington would not interfere with a decision to annex parts of the West Bank.
“We don’t want to tell Israel what it should do and how it should create communities in Judea and Samaria,” he says, using the Israeli name for the West Bank. “We have been very clear, and this goes back to the first Trump administration, that developing communities in Judea and Samaria is not a violation of international law.”
Asked about the International Criminal Court, Huckabee calls the Hague-based court “an incredibly lawless, worthless entity that is going after Israelis.”
Trump says U.S. will stop Gaza war as death toll reportedly hits 53,000
President Trump says the U.S. will have the situation in Gaza “taken care of” Israel has imposed a blockade for over two months on Gaza. U.N. says there are at least 14 000 children in Gaza who are severely malnourished. 50 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory since midnight, rescue agency says. The United Nations warns that more than 1 million children are at risk of starvation, water and medicine shortages in the Gaza Strip, which was home to about 2.4 million people before the war. The UN says the situation is “uncionable” and that “the world is largely indifference” to the plight of Gaza’s children, who are “walking in the streets” and “it is a massive wave of panic and panic” in the area, a U. N. official says. “There is a panic and a panic in the middle of the night,” a Gaza resident tells AFP. “The Israeli occupation bombed the house next to mine, hitting it directly while its residents were inside”
“We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving,” the president told reporters.
The brief comments came as Mr. Trump concluded the final leg of a multi-day tour of Arab nations in the Middle East, including Qatar, which has been a key partner with the U.S. and Egypt in trying to broker a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel has imposed a blockade for over two months on Gaza, leading United Nations agencies and other humanitarian groups to warn of rapidly dwindling fuel, food and medicine supplies in the Palestinian territory that, before the war, was home to about 2.4 million people.
Injured Palestinian children receive medical treatment at Nasser Hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, Gaza, May 16, 2025. / Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty
Israel has repeatedly denied that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, and it blames the suffering of the enclave’s civilian population entirely on Hamas, which sparked the war with its unprecedented Oct. 7 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.
Mr. Trump’s remarks came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced openness to any new ideas to bring aid into Gaza, after a U.S.- and Israeli-backed plan was widely criticized, while also expressing concern over the humanitarian situation in the territory.
Thousands of children in Gaza severely malnourished, United Nations says
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
The United Nation’s World Food Programme says there are at least 14 000 children in Gaza who are severely malnourished.
Six-year-old Najwa Hajaj is one of them. A hospital in Gaza had to discharge her because they ran of food and medicine. Her mother says she weighs just 13 pounds. That’s the average weight of a 3-month-old infant.
Her sister died of hunger last year. Her parents are terrified they could lose another child.
“She is dying in my hands, and I can’t do anything,” her father, Hussain Hajaj, told CBS News. “I can barely feed her, I don’t know what to do.”
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
All he has at the moment is baby formula.
Medical student Adnan Hanza was volunteering at the European hospital in southern Gaza, where cases of malnutrition had been on the increase. But the medical facility was evacuated earlier this week after Israeli strikes nearby.
“I know this is malnutrition for all the people here,” Hanza said. “Like the skeleton, people walking in the streets.”
Hanza resides with his parents and siblings in a bombed-out home they returned to after being displaced 12 times. His mother showed CBS News their kitchen. The cupboards were bare. The little food they have won’t last them a week.
Relentless Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency said Friday that 50 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory since midnight.
“The number of martyrs killed in Israeli shelling targeting civilian homes in the northern Gaza Strip between midnight and early this morning has risen to 50… Our teams are still working in those areas,” civil defense official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP.
The bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on northern Gaza are brought to the Indonesia Hospital in Gaza City, May 16, 2025. / Credit: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu/Getty
“The Israeli occupation bombed the house next to mine, hitting it directly while its residents were inside,” Yousef Al-Sultan, 40, from the al-Salatin area, west of Beit Lahia, told AFP, reporting “air strikes, artillery shelling and gunfire from quadcopter drones.”
“There is a massive wave of displacement among civilians. Fear and panic grip us in the middle of the night,” he said.
Head of the U.N. Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said Friday in a message posted on social media that Israel’s operations in Gaza had reportedly killed 45 children in just two days, which she called “unconscionable.”
“This should shock the world but is largely met with indifference,” Russell wrote. “Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza. This horror must stop.”
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
She warned that more than 1 million children in Gaza were at risk of starvation, “deprived of food, water and medicine.”
Children clammer for food as charities distribute hot meals to Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, May 14, 2025, amid a months-long blockade of the territory by Israel. / Credit: Mahmoud ssa/Anadolu/Getty
There was no immediate comment on the latest strikes in northern Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, but Israeli media said it was part of a stepped-up operation that would include new ground incursions into the area. The IDF has said since the beginning of the war that it only targets Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza, which it accuses of hiding weapons and fighters in civilian infrastructure.
Qatar and hostage families call on Netanyahu to make a deal
Hamas and allied groups seized 251 people, many of them civilians, during the Oct. 7 attack and killed about 1,200, according to Israeli officials. The hostages were brought back into Gaza, and most have been released during two separate ceasefires. Israeli officials believe 58 remain in captivity inside Gaza, about 20 of whom are still thought to be alive.
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
The hostages’ families have led protests for months demanding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas to secure the remaining captives’ release, and they voiced new concern on Friday over the escalating military operations in Gaza, which they say puts their loved ones at increasing risk.
With President Trump now set to conclude a three-nation Middle East trip — which notably did not include a stop in Israel — the families have ramped up pressure on Netanyahu to back the American leader’s calls for a negotiated resolution with Hamas.
“The hostages’ families woke up this morning with heavy hearts and great concern in light of reports about increased attacks in Gaza and the imminent conclusion of President Trump’s visit to the region,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum organization said in a statement on Friday. “We are in dramatic hours that will determine the future of our loved ones, the future of Israeli society, and the future of the Middle East. Missing this historic opportunity would be a resounding failure that will be remembered in infamy forever. We call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to join hands with President Trump’s efforts, which will lead first and foremost to the release of 58 hostages and to extensive regional agreements. Time is running out, the world is watching, and history will remember.”
Netanyahu’s government has vowed to continue the war in Gaza until all of its goals are met. It says those goals include the release of all remaining hostages, the “military and governmental defeat of Hamas,” and ensuring that Gaza “will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
There was fleeting hope for a potential breakthrough in long-running negotiations earlier this week when Hamas, in a deal negotiated directly with the Trump administration, released the last living U.S. national who had been among the hostages, Edan Alexander.
On Wednesday, as President Trump visited the country, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani lamented Israel’s mounting assault in Gaza on the heels of Alexander’s release, saying in an interview with CNN that it raised doubts about the prospects of ongoing diplomatic efforts.
“Unfortunately, Israeli reaction to this was a mass bombing the next day,” said al-Thani, adding that, along with “statements coming out of the Israeli government” about not ending the war “is basically sending the signal that we [Israel] are not interested in negotiations.”
The top Qatari diplomat stressed that the country’s negotiating team remained engaged with all parties in the conflict, and “we hope to see some progress,” but he cautioned: “I’m not sure if this progress will be something seen very soon with this continuing behavior.”
Advertisement Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement
“If there is no willingness to engage in meaningful negotiations, then how can we reach the solution?” he asked.
Thus far the Trump administration has shown no willingness to increase pressure on Netanyahu by constraining its vital military aid for Israel.
The Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza said Thursday that the death toll in the Palestinian enclave since the war began had reached 53,010, including 2,876 people killed and nearly 8,000 injured since Israel resumed ground operations on March 18, when it ended the last ceasefire.
Texas mom accused of buying ammunition for son who officials say planned school attack
New chatbot encourages phone use in movie theaters, New York Times reports
See the moment 10 inmates escaped from New Orleans jail