US grilled over Gaza famine fears as it withdraws from ceasefire talks
The US on Thursday said it was pulling its negotiators from Gaza ceasefire talks, even as US officials were grilled by reporters over what experts say is a famine taking hold in the besieged enclave.
US envoy Steve Witkoff blamed Hamas for the collapse in talks and said negotiators would leave Doha, Qatar. The Gulf state, along with Egypt, has been mediating between Hamas, the US and Israel.
"We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza," Witkoff said in a post on X.
"We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home.”
The pullback comes as the Gaza Strip descends deeper into hunger as a result of a blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza. This week, 28 western countries, including traditional supporters of Israel like Poland, the UK and Italy condemned Israel's chokehold of food entering the enclave.
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"We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food," they said.
With basic food items vanishing from markets and families enduring days without enough to survive, scenes of people collapsing from hunger and sheer exhaustion have become increasingly common across Gaza's streets. Eyewitnesses have recounted the gruesome scenes to Middle East Eye reporters in Gaza.
The same day Witkoff pulled out of talks, the State Department was grilled by reporters over what aid experts say is an impending famine.
The questions were unusually pointed in response to the spokesperson blaming Hamas for the lack of food entering Gaza and calling on other aid groups to coordinate with the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The US and Israeli backed GHF was designed to bypass the UN's infrastructure for aid delivery and distribution in Gaza. Former US mercenaries who worked at the sites say starving Palestinians have been shot at and attacked trying to get meager amounts of aid.
When State Department Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott called on entities to cooperate with GHF, one reporter responded: "They are volunteering but they can't get past the border."
A Financial Times reporter asked Pigott: "We all acknowledge obviously that Israel controls Gaza's borders completely and it is limiting food to the population because Hamas has not agreed to its terms... to be clear, is the US government okay with Israel allowing children and adult civilians to starve so long as Hamas and the UN refuse to play by Israel's rules?"
"I reject the premise of that question," Pigott responded.
Talks
The ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel have ebbed and flowed for weeks. The two sides reached an agreement on a three-phase deal in January. Israel tore up the deal in March before talks on a permanent end to the war were scheduled to take place and unilaterally resumed attacking the Gaza Strip.
Although the Trump administration has clashed with Israel on several files - including striking an independent ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen and condemning Israeli strikes on Syria - it has continued to blame Hamas for the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire and failure to reach a new deal.
The proposal the two sides have been working on largely echoes the previous deal that Israel withdrew from in March. It would see captives held in Gaza released in the first 60 days in exchange for a halt in fighting, more aid entering the enclave and Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails.
Roughly 20 living captives are believed to remain in Gaza, mostly military-age men. Hamas has insisted that any agreement should lead to a permanent end to the war after the captives are freed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected making that commitment.
MEE reported earlier this month that the talks remain deadlocked over at least two key details. The first is the extent of the proposed Israeli redeployment from the Gaza Strip during the 60-day truce. The second is the method of aid distribution.
Israeli negotiators insist that GHF remain one of the main distributors of food in Gaza, despite widespread international condemnation. Hamas fears GHF, which is linked to Israel and guarded by US mercenaries, would replace the UN.
Israel also wants to keep its soldiers in Rafah and create a "buffer zone" up to three kilometres deep along Gaza's eastern and northern boundary with Israel, sources tell MEE.
The "buffer zone" would cover several Palestinian towns and residential areas, blocking hundreds of thousands of displaced people from returning home.
If Israel remains in Rafah, it would control the border crossing to Egypt. Israeli officials have said they want to create a so-called "humanitarian city" there, a proposal that has drawn international criticism, with some describing it as resembling a concentration camp.
Some observers believed the two sides had a better chance of reaching a deal this time because Israel's parliament is starting a months-long recess next week. Netanyahu's coalition partners have threatened to collapse his government if he ends the war.
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