Washington is fixated on the twists and turns of a widening political crisis as MAGA world revolts over the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein imbroglio.
Yet there’s nowhere near as much attention on a humanitarian scandal of unbearable dimensions that is unfolding in Gaza, in which the United States may be complicit.
The Epstein saga is a tragedy, written in the pain endured by dozens of women and young girls who testified that they were abused by the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker. But this human angle has often been forgotten in a week focused on Trump’s missteps and obfuscations.
The political storm that is obscuring the agony of victims who lost any opportunity for justice when Epstein took his own life in prison is simultaneously blotting out a larger-scale catastrophe abroad.
Encroaching famine is taking lives in Gaza, with the old, the sick and children most at risk. Heart-rending footage is emerging from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave bordering Israel, of emaciated infants; parents desperate to feed their families; and the squabbles breaking out over the meager food that is available.
“I don’t know what you’d call it other than mass starvation. And it is man-made,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week.
Prospects of any swift relief for Palestinian civilians suffered a serious blow on Thursday when the United States pulled its negotiators from talks in Qatar aimed at forging a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. US envoy Steve Witkoff blamed a lack of desire from Hamas — which triggered the war in Gaza with the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel — to reach a ceasefire.
The situation in Israel and Gaza is deeply complex, marked by ill faith and extremism on both sides. Israel believes it is locked with Hamas in an existential struggle for the survival of its nation and of Jews more generally. The situation is exacerbated by Hamas’ willingness to use its own Palestinian people as pawns.
The Trump administration has shown little willingness to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to alleviate the horrific conditions despite an intense escalation in other international pressure on Israel. It has been more tolerant than the Biden administration — which came under heavy criticism from liberal Democrats — of the onslaught in Gaza.
The Israeli offensive was launched after the October 7 attacks, which killed 1,200 people in Israel. Another 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas and taken back into Gaza. As of the beginning of this month, Israel said 49 hostages are still captive. Some 28 have been declared dead, but the status of several others is uncertain.
A joint US-Israeli humanitarian aid initiative that involves the private sector — which the allies argue helps food reach civilians in need, rather than be stolen by Hamas — is facing intense international scrutiny.
Critics say it sends far too little food into Gaza, and there have been multiple reports of Palestinians being killed as they desperately seek anything to eat. The United Nations says the system is a “death trap.” Israel denies this. But the Gaza Health Ministry says more than 1,000 people have been killed since May. And the UN says most casualties occurred among people making their way to aid sites run by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The State Department on Thursday responded to criticisms of the aid system and appeared to recognize the gravity of the crisis — while placing responsibility on Hamas. “It is never enough in a war zone. It is never enough. That is why we are committed to trying to get as much aid in as possible,” the department’s principal deputy spokesman, Tommy Pigott, said. “That is why we worked for that cease-fire, because of what we are seeing. But aid needs to be delivered in a way where it is not being looted by Hamas.”
Cindy McCain, the executive director of the UN World Food Program, told CNN’s Becky Anderson this week that if looting did occur, it was because people in Gaza are so desperate.
“The truth is right now the most important thing we could do is get the food in, and we know where our food goes, because we have a system on the ground that is tested and works,” McCain said. “As far as the looting goes, we view it a little differently. These people are starving to death. It is looting, but they’re hungry. And so that does occur.” The WFP does not work with the US- and Israel-backed program, which is designed to bypass UN structures that Israel regards as exploited by Hamas.
As US allies demand a massive increase in aid going into Gaza, Israel says it is not to blame. “In Gaza today there is no famine caused by Israel,” government spokesman David Mencer told reporters Wednesday. “There is, however, a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas. … The suffering exists because Hamas has created it.”
The Trump administration’s lack of pressure on Israel despite the wrenching footage coming out of Gaza is more than raising questions about its highly controversial aid program. It risks looking like it doesn’t really care that much.
As CNN’s Kylie Atwood and Jennifer Hansler noted on Thursday, the administration lacks a high-level individual appointed to focus on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The Biden administration maintained a special envoy who worked on Gaza issues and who was in direct contact with top Israeli officials. This is the kind of omission — in a world where the United States was once a galvanizing force on international crises — that is noticed everywhere and that sends clear political signals.
But political negligence, failed peace talks, and the question of who is culpable for desperate scenes in Gaza mean nothing to mothers who can’t feed their kids, or families who can’t get even one inadequate meal per day. UNICEF said Thursday that malnutrition-related deaths are up 54% since April, citing Palestinian Health Ministry data.
A crisis that exemplifies a changed world and the consequences of ‘America First’
Political debate in the US on the Gaza issue is tortured and tends to bring out extreme responses.
At the height of campus protests last year over Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attacks, some demonstrations evinced alarming streaks of antisemitism. There have been multiple incidents of Jews falling victim to violence and intimidation. Two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed in an attack in Washington in May. Many of Netanyahu’s US supporters rarely make a distinction between Hamas and Palestinian civilians and reject the idea that the US should impose its own pressure on the prime minister for humanitarian relief.
The calamity exemplifies the failure of politics and diplomacy in a world in which international institutions are fracturing or losing influence. It’s the result of the dearth of any meaningful Middle East peace process after years of increasingly right-wing Israeli government and the eclipse of any effective, moderate leadership for Palestinians.
It’s also a lesson in the consequences when the United States abandons its traditional global role and when “America First” policies constrain the world’s most powerful nation. The idea that America is a moral leader in the world, never embraced by Trump, is a harder sell than ever.
The situation also raises the question of what level of humanitarian desolation the White House is prepared to accept before it leans harder on Netanyahu. In the past, President Donald Trump has been moved, on occasion, into action by footage of suffering children — for instance after a chemical weapons attack in Syria in 2017. There is no sign yet that he’s reached a pivot point on Gazan hunger.
Trump has said repeatedly he wants to end the war in Gaza — even if some of his suggestions, like the creation of a “Riviera of the Middle East” in the enclave, are absurd and imply ethnic cleansing with the forced departure of Palestinians.
The president’s unwillingness to do more on Gaza amid hideous humanitarian scenes there have tarnished his aspirations to be a global peacemaker and to win the Nobel prize for which Netanyahu nominated him on a recent Oval Office visit.
Netanyahu’s hawkishness, against the backdrop of pressure from right-wing members of his coalition, also appears to be doing lasting damage to Trump’s wider diplomatic aspirations in the region, including his hopes of expanding the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. Israel — far from toning down its approach following US air attacks that appear to have significantly damaged Iran’s nuclear program and its near-eradication of Tehran’s regional proxies including Hezbollah — is becoming even more belligerent.
This raises the possibility that what Netanyahu sees as the pursuit of Israel’s national interests could eventually conflict with what Trump views as the vital national security interests of the United States. CNN’s Kevin Liptak reported this week that Trump was caught by surprise by an Israeli strike on the only Catholic church in Gaza and by Israeli airstrikes against government buildings in the Syrian capital Damascus, and telephoned Netanyahu on both occasions.
Trump took a significant political risk in pursuit of better humanitarian conditions for civilians in civil war-devastated Syria by conferring legitimacy on Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former rebel commander, by meeting him in Saudi Arabia in May.
Washington has so far resisted international pressure to force Netanyahu’s hand as warnings of famine in Gaza mount. It did not sign on to a warning by the leaders of 25 Western nations this week that Israel was “drip feeding” aid into the Gaza Strip. Washington has often adopted a more benevolent approach toward Israel and the Palestinian conflict than its Western allies. This has been the case even when past administrations have billed themselves as neutral brokers between the two sides during ultimately futile peace processes.
But the current gulf on Middle East issues is stark. On Thursday, France reacted to the worsening situation in Gaza with a surprise announcement by President Emmanuel Macron that Paris would recognize a Palestinian state in September. Israel warned the move “rewards terror” and risked its annihilation. Britain, another ally that has worked hard to retain good relations with Trump, also broke with the president on Thursday. Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that starvation in Gaza was “unspeakable.” He added, “We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.”
As the pressure mounts, US diplomacy is foundering.
Witkoff and Trump had repeatedly promised a deal was within reach. But as with Trump’s buckled Ukraine peace effort, the US lacks the leverage and the capacity to push an agreement over the line. In both cases, it often seems that the administration doesn’t even fully understand the issues.
Witkoff said on X Thursday that the US will consider alternative options to bring Israeli hostages home and to try to create a more “stable environment” for the people of Gaza. Israel has also withdrawn its negotiating team from the talks, although it is offering conflicting signals about whether the process is in crisis.
Perhaps Witkoff’s exit is a gambit to create leverage on Hamas as the situation worsens. But this is an organization that embeds its military assets in civilian areas, so it may be impervious to humanitarian leverage.
Either way, time is running out for potentially hundreds of thousands of Gazans.
Will a moment arrive when even Trump — as he flails over his own self-induced political mess over Epstein — feels he has no alternative but to act?
