Gaza City — In a move critics say whitewashes atrocity with optics, President Donald Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited the ravaged southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, walking through what Palestinians now grimly call “the death trap” — a GHF aid distribution zone in Rafah, where hundreds have been slaughtered since May under the guise of humanitarian relief.
Witkoff, a real estate mogul turned political insider, spent five hours inside Gaza, flanked by US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Israel-backed security units. The convoy drove past skeletal buildings and scorched sand before arriving at one of the main Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites, where dehydrated children stood in lines stretching across demolished neighborhoods. He offered statements about American concern and pledged a new “Trump-crafted aid vision,” yet failed to acknowledge the growing body count these very sites have produced.
Since May 27, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed either while waiting for aid or in its chaotic distribution. Of these, over 850 were killed at or near GHF aid sites, and at least 500 more were gunned down along the convoy routes. These deaths, Palestinian medics say, were often deliberate — the result of aerial attacks, sniper fire, or chaotic gunfire from Israeli troops and private security working alongside GHF.
The so-called aid zones, mostly concentrated in the decimated south, have become synonymous with mass death. Human Rights Watch has labeled the operations “militarized food lines” that function as traps rather than relief, and accused the U.S. and Israel of engineering a system where hunger becomes an instrument of warfare.
Witkoff’s arrival was met not with gratitude, but with outrage. “Where was he when my daughters were shot in the bread line?” asked Fatima al-Dalu, a 33-year-old mother of four who lost two children at a GHF station last month. “He is walking through our graves pretending to feed us.”
Despite these horrors, no formal investigation into the aid deaths has been opened by either the United Nations or the International Criminal Court. Gaza’s Health Ministry says the true death toll may be much higher, as hundreds of bodies remain buried under rubble or unaccounted for due to mass displacements.
Witkoff offered no comment on the killings but described his trip as “productive” and “essential for developing the Trump administration’s Middle East peace framework.” Aides later circulated a press release boasting of “robust US humanitarian commitment to the Palestinian people.”
Analysts view the visit as political theater staged for both domestic and international consumption. “Trump is trying to rebrand his foreign policy,” said Dr. Leila Barghouti, a Gaza-based political scientist. “But bringing cameras to the scene of your own crimes doesn’t absolve you of them. It just makes the staging more grotesque.”
While Israel continues its military campaign and the United States positions itself as a relief broker, on-the-ground conditions worsen. Gaza’s hospitals are nonfunctional, children starve in plain sight, and survivors live in a limbo of forced displacement, foreign propaganda, and artillery fire.
According to The Guardian, Witkoff’s five-hour presence in Rafah included photo ops and logistics briefings but no direct engagement with displaced Palestinians. He did not visit the dozens of informal camps nearby where cholera, hunger, and shellshock rage daily. “This is not diplomacy,” said a US aid worker who spoke under anonymity. “This is a man touring his PR problem.”
Noted reports confirm that since the start of the Genocide in Gaza, over 60,785 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of them women and children, and US-linked operations like GHF continue to be complicit in those figures. “Aid has become a weapon, not a lifeline.”
