A Palestinian woman holds a malnourished child at Al-Awda hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on June 30. Photo by Eyad Baba / AFP
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Donald Trump in the United States this week, they will undoubtedly celebrate the success of the 12-day war between the U.S. and Israel against Iran, which significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Their agenda also includes discussions about ending the conflict in Gaza and planning for the “day after.”
As the former head of the USAID West Bank/Gaza mission for five years between 1990 and 2004, I also hope that the acute malnutrition that has taken root in Gaza will be high on their agenda. Trump must make clear to Netanyahu that starving the Palestinian population in Gaza will not serve Israel’s interest.
I am intimately aware of the challenges associated with balancing Israeli security concerns and the need to provide humanitarian assistance to suffering civilians — challenges Netanyahu will surely protest about, should Trump press him. But Netanyahu’s visit, on the heels of a victorious campaign against Iran, is the perfect opportunity for U.S. leaders to propose options that secure both Israel’s security and the expedient delivery of humanitarian aid.
The last four months in Gaza have been particularly horrific. For 70 days, starting in early March, Israel imposed a complete closure on the strip, preventing the entry of any humanitarian assistance. The already dismal living conditions worsened, heightening fears of mass starvation.
Even Trump, who has been generally supportive of Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza, condemned that blockade. Israel’s response — the authorization of a newly formed U.S. organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to administer aid — has hardly made things better.
The GHF was tasked with feeding the population of Gaza while simultaneously preventing food and other basic necessities from falling into the hands of Hamas militants. Israeli officials believed that GHF would have the capabilities to prevent Hamas from intercepting aid that established groups like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency did not, or would not.
Perhaps in part because of that latter mission, GHF distribution efforts have been marked by the almost daily killing and wounding of Palestinians en route to the distribution hubs. The Gaza Health Ministry reports that since GHF began operating in Gaza on May 19, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded near distribution sites, as a result of shootings by IDF soldiers.
But there is little sign that the IDF’s actions have helped deter Hamas from seizing aid. In late June, Haaretz reported that unnamed IDF soldiers had said that “commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.”
Even aside from the scenes of death surrounding distribution points, the GHF has been a disaster. It is fundamentally incapable of feeding a large percentage of Gaza’s population, who cannot walk the long distances to the four distribution sites within the strip. And the Palestinians who manage to secure five-pound GHF food packages — one million of which had been distributed as of July 1, according to the GHF — must then trek several miles back to their make-shift homes. As such, they are vulnerable to having part or all of their aid packages stolen by Hamas militants or criminal elements, who then sell the food for a profit.
From the outset, humanitarian organizations, and eventually even GHF’s founder, criticized the operation as a violation of core humanitarian principles.
The only decisive way to end this humanitarian nightmare in Gaza is for Israel and Hamas to come to a deal that ends the fighting. This is where Trump comes in.
Israel’s stated goals behind their intensive military actions in Gaza during the last several months has been to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. That mission appears to have been accomplished; on Monday, a senior Hamas official said the group’s control over the strip has “completely collapsed.”
Israel and Hamas are already negotiating over a 60-day ceasefire proposal, and Trump has issued a personal commitment that negotiations to achieve a lasting agreement to end the conflict will continue throughout the ceasefire period.
Netanyahu’s visit offers Trump the ideal opportunity to lay down the law with his Israeli counterpart: With Hamas’ increasingly apparent debilitation in Gaza, there is no justification for Israel’s campaign there to continue.
It will not be easy for Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. He must overcome objections from hardline ministers. But appropriate pressure from Trump should help him gain the necessary backing in the Knesset and among the Israeli public.
This will take some coaxing. Trump must, in the context of Netanyahu’s visit, reassure Israelis that if a ceasefire is signed the U.S. will continue to supply the weapons necessary for Israel’s defense, and reject Hamas’ participation in any future Gaza governance structure.
He must also lay out his team’s willingness to engage in an extensive and continuous diplomatic effort to end the conflict, once and for all.
For their part, Arab leaders will need assurances of Trump’s continued personal engagement, particularly to ensure that Israel fulfills its commitments to upholding a ceasefire and improving humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s civilian population. Trump will need, eventually, to push the Arab countries to take the lead in devising a mechanism, building upon the plan discussed at the March 2025 Arab Summit meeting in Cairo, for forming and funding a non-Hamas governance and security regime in Gaza, as well as meeting Gaza’s short-term priorities, such as reestablishing functioning health and education systems and restoring clean water and energy supplies.
The best outcome of this week’s meetings would be an Israeli willingness to restore adequate humanitarian access in Gaza, which would require the deployment of the full panoply of humanitarian organizations that have long worked in Israel. To quell Israeli concerns, Trump should commit to authorizing a proactive monitoring mechanism of the distribution process to ensure that the aid is not falling into the hands of Hamas militants.
Whether Trump is willing to dedicate the necessary time and diplomatic and financial resources will go a long way to determining the prospects for diplomatic success and for long-term transformation of the Middle East region. I hope he will be. The daily reports of food seekers being killed or children dying of acute malnutrition are unbearable. We cannot come to accept them as simply a new status quo, and Trump should do everything in his power to ensure they don’t become one.
