Dozens of Palestinians Killed Seeking Aid as Witkoff and Huckabee Tour GHF Hub in Stage-Managed Visit

Israel and the U.S. have done little to alleviate the widening famine in Gaza, even as the forced starvation has passed the tipping point.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee tour a GHF hub in Rafah on August 1, 2025. Source: X

GAZA CITY—President Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee toured an “aid distribution” site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Rafah in southern Gaza on Friday. During the U.S. envoy's highly stage-managed visit, at least 82 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave, including 49 people seeking food aid with more than 270 injured.

The visit came as the leading international authority on food crises—the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—this week said that the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” warning that the situation has reached “an alarming and deadly turning point” and predicting “widespread death” without immediate action.

“A theatrical performance is currently taking place at the U.S. aid distribution centers, attended by Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff: A civilized distribution of aid, without repression and pepper gas, without gunfire or casualties, without stampedes," Eyad Amawi, a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee and a coordinator for local NGOs based in Deir al-Balah, said. "Today, the goal is to discredit thousands of video clips, to wipe away the blood of nearly 1,000 starving martyrs and hundreds of wounded in the traps of humiliation.”

Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza reached a tipping point last month, with Palestinians collapsing in the streets and with men, women, and children dying from hunger and malnutrition on a daily basis. Three new deaths from the spreading famine were recorded by the ministry of health on Friday, bringing the total number since the start of the war to 162, including 92 children—many of them over the past three weeks alone.

Dead and wounded Palestinians seeking aid at the Zikim crossing brought to Hamad hospital and Shifa hospital in northern Gaza. August 1, 2025. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.

On Friday, many dead and wounded Palestinians attacked by Israeli forces, while seeking food from United Nations convoys at the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, were carried by people from the site to the steps of the shuttered Hamad hospital near the coast. Ambulances had been unable to reach the site of the attacks, but were waiting to transfer them to partially functioning hospitals in Gaza City. Some of the bodies carried into the hospital appeared emaciated.

Emergency workers wrapped the corpses in body bags and loaded them onto ambulances. At Al-Shifa Hospital, injured young men and boys were admitted to the medical facility in a seemingly endless stream, and many were suffering gunshot wounds. Family members wept over the corpses laid on the ground in front of the hospital entrance.

“The situation is hard. Deadly,” said Ahmed al-Madhoun, who was wounded in the leg trying to get food at Zikim and sat wincing in pain outside Shifa. “There were martyrs lying on the ground, wounded everywhere. It’s unreal. You see death with your own eyes,” he told Drop Site News. “I only gathered two cans of beans and a can of something else. I had just started getting out of the vehicle, and as soon as I got out, they opened fire on me. One person was martyred, and I was wounded. I kept crawling until I reached Hamad hospital.”

Fares Afana, the head of emergency and ambulance services in Northern Gaza, told Drop Site that at least 14 aid seekers had been killed at Zikim on Friday and more than 150 wounded.

“The Israeli occupation continues to target those waiting for aid in the Zikim area,” Afana said. “This method of distribution—we’ve spoken about it often—is a humiliating way to treat our Palestinian people.” He added, “What stood out yesterday, and today, was gunfire aimed at upper body parts: the chest and head…All the people waiting for aid are unarmed civilians. They pose no threat to the occupation forces, so there’s no justification for this direct targeting of hungry, aid-seeking Palestinians.”

Meanwhile, Witkoff posted photos on X donning a flak jacket and a black MAGA hat. He was flanked by armed guards as he met with officials at the GHF site in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which has been razed to the ground and ethnically cleansed by the Israeli military. He said that he spent over five hours inside Gaza “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions, and meeting with [the GHF] and other agencies…to give [the president] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation, and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”

Huckabee, in a post on X that was quickly deleted, claimed Palestinians in Gaza “love Trump” and said that Palestinians refer to “one of the few” remaining buildings still standing in Rafah as “Trump tower.” He later posted that the visit was “to learn the truth about [GHF] aid sites,” adding “We received briefings from [the Israeli military] and spoke to folks on the ground. GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”

Public Relations and The Facts on The Ground

The PR-oriented visit stood in stark contrast to the scenes of chaos and bloodshed from the daily aid massacres of starving Palestinians, since the GHF took over aid distribution in Gaza in late May. The GHF had established just four hubs in remote, militarized zones—three in the south and one in Wadi Gaza—and none in northern Gaza, where scant deliveries of UN aid convoys have been allowed in.

Between May 27 and July 31, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food—859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites, and 514 along the routes of food convoys—according to the UN. Most of the killings were committed by the Israeli military but also by U.S. security contractors and armed Palestinian groups allied with Israel.

International outcry over the images and increasing reports of starvation-related deaths in Gaza prompted Israel last week to announce that it would impose “humanitarian pauses” for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza, allow in more aid along secure routes, and allow airdrops of food. The measures have had little effect on the ground, according to aid workers in Gaza, the UN, and international NGOS.

Since the so-called “humanitarian pauses” were put in place on Sunday, at least 593 Palestinians were confirmed killed across Gaza, according to health ministry figures and news reports, including 300 seeking aid, and over 1,967 injured.

The “secure routes” inside Gaza that Israel said it would designate for humanitarian aid convoys—from 6  a.m. to 11  p.m.—were said to include corridors through Zikim, Netzarim, a direct road to Deir al-Balah, and two “central routes.” But on Thursday, the UN raised serious doubts about access and safety. “Despite Israeli announcements regarding the designation of convoy routes as secure, trucks continue to face long delays that expose drivers, aid workers and crowds to danger,” UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said, adding that only “a single route has been made available” for teams exiting Kerem Shalom, where Israeli forces maintain “an ad hoc checkpoint.”

UNOCHA data underscores the dysfunction: of the 92 coordinated aid movements between last Wednesday and Tuesday, 16% were denied outright, 26% were approved but blocked or delayed, 47% were fully facilitated, and 11% were withdrawn for logistical or security reasons.

Afana—the head of emergency and ambulance services in Northern Gaza—said one of the reasons for the looting was the targeting of local tribal groups trying to secure the convoys. “A group of tribal security men was targeted by surveillance drones, resulting in 6 martyrs among them,” Afana told Drop Site. The Gaza Government Media Office added that most aid never reaches UN warehouses. Instead, they are either unloaded by starving civilians who are often fired upon by Israeli forces, or looted by Israeli-backed armed gangs. Eleven tribal volunteers securing aid were also killed by Israeli forces earlier this week, the Media Office added.

Meanwhile, the already minuscule amount of food reaching Palestinians has barely increased. “The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground,” Olga Cherevko, a staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Friday. “There are so many factors on the ground that point to the fact that, despite the slight relaxation of [Israel’s] various constraints [on aid entry], we’re still in the same situation,” Cherevko said. “People are continuing to starve, malnutrition rates continue to go up, people are risking their lives to get food, and there’s no change substantially and operationally, really.”

The Israeli military confirmed that six countries were allowed to airdrop aid into Gaza—including France, Germany, Spain, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates—yet the amount remains woefully insufficient and has been criticized as a dangerous and ineffective method of aid delivery, with parcels landing in remote, militarized areas or falling into the sea.

“The ongoing airdrops and limited convoys have not succeeded in delivering food to the thousands of families living under severe conditions. The risk involved in accessing aid remains extremely high and the quantities that do make it in are far from enough to meet even the most basic needs,” Amawi said. “People are running long distances over sand, rubble, and danger zones just to be in the right place at the right time when the parachutes fall. I personally know individuals who have made this desperate run more than five times in a single day and still return empty handed. The emotional and physical toll is overwhelming. Imagine the weight of hunger, heat, fear, and disappointment repeated again and again. This is not humanitarian relief. It is more like torment and humiliation that robs people of their dignity. Aid should not require such suffering. It should reach people where they are, not force them into a race for survival that many, especially children, the elderly, the sick, simply cannot win.”

Human Rights Watch published a report on Friday concluding that “US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”

The report said, “The dire humanitarian situation is a direct result of Israel’s use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war—a war crime—as well as Israel’s continued intentional deprivation of aid and basic services, which amounts to the crime against humanity of extermination, and acts of genocide.”

Jawa Ahmad and Herman Gill contributed to this report.