President Donald Trump‘s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, made an extremely rare visit to Gaza on Friday amid the spiraling hunger crisis in the enclave under Israel’s deadly offensive and aid restrictions.
The pair visited an aid distribution site in Rafah run by the controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has for months overseen the majority of aid distribution in the enclave under a new system launched in May.
“Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza,” Witkoff said in a post on X. He said they spent that time “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions,” and meeting with GHF and other agencies.
“The purpose of the visit was to give @POTUS a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza,” he said.
Huckabee said in a separate post that he had joined Witkoff on the visit to “learn the truth” about aid sites run by GHF. He said they also received briefings from the Israeli military and “spoke to folks on the ground.” It was not immediately clear whom he was referring to.
In a post on X sharing images of the delegation in Gaza, he hailed the number of meals distributed by GHF — “more than one million meals a day” as an “incredible feat.”
GHF has been predominantly responsible for the distribution of aid in Gaza since late May, when Israel said it would allow a basic amount of humanitarian supplies into the enclave after lifting a crippling blockade that barred the entry of food and other vital items for more than two months.
Israel on Sunday announced measures to allow more aid into Gaza amid mounting global outrage over rising deaths from starvation. Since then, GHF has continued to distribute about 1.2 million meals a day, according to data shared by the organization. In a population of roughly 2.1 million people, that equates to just over half a meal per person per day on average.
Humanitarian groups have said the aid that has so far been allowed into Gaza over the past week is not enough to stave off famine in the enclave.
They have also condemned incidents in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while trying to reach aid in the weeks since the new distribution system came into effect.
Since late May, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food, with 859 deaths “in the vicinity” of GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, said in a news release Thursday. It said most of the killings were committed by the Israeli military.
Witkoff and Huckabee made the trip as part of an effort by Washington to secure a plan to see more food delivered to Gaza as deaths from starvation in the enclave continue to rise, according to the White House.
It was not clear how arrangements for the visit, including the meetings with local Palestinians in Gaza, were being arranged, with Israel having maintained strict control over access to Gaza throughout the war, barring international media and foreign officials from entering the territory independently.
Basem Naim, a senior political official for Hamas, condemned the visit, writing in a statement addressed to Witkoff: “Gaza is not Animal Farm that needs a theatrical personal visit to take some pictures in front of the #Death_Factories that your American companies manage in collaboration with the fascist army of Israel.”
The trip comes as a growing number of Palestinians continue to die from starvation despite months of warnings from humanitarian groups about the impact of Israel’s offensive and the strict aid restrictions it has upheld.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Witkoff and Huckabee would brief Trump “immediately after their visit to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution into the region.”
She said more details would be forthcoming once the plan was “approved and agreed on by the president of the United States.”
Their visit to Gaza comes after Witkoff traveled to Israel and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday to address the dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave.
Trump said earlier this week that “real starvation” was taking place, citing images he had seen on TV in a break with Netanyahu, who has denied there is starvation in the enclave and sought to blame Hamas for the crisis.
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