After President Donald Trump said on Monday that children are starving in Gaza, Republican senators started to show some daylight between themselves and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, siding with Trump and acknowledging the starvation.
It’s only a slight departure from the Senate GOP’s overwhelming support for Israel. And senators tried to couch their recognition of the problem by blaming Hamas. But it’s one of the first splits Republicans have shown between them and Netanyahu, after Trump seemed incredulous that there was no hunger problem in Gaza.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Israel’s closest allies in Congress, blamed Hamas for “it being the way it is,” but acknowledged there was a problem.
“We need to get humanitarian aid in,” Graham said.
Sen. John Cornyn told NOTUS that “obviously the humanitarian crisis is real.”
Cornyn also blamed Hamas — “I think a lot of the deliveries have been because of Hamas and stealing the aid” — but he said he was “with the president.”
“This needs to get resolved, but in a way that returns the hostages,” Cornyn said.
Trump said Monday there is “real starvation” in Gaza, a notable break from Netanyahu, who maintained Sunday that there is “no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.” But after widespread images of malnourished children and food shortages in the area, Trump doesn’t seem to be taking Netanyahu’s word. The president said the U.S. would help “set up food centers” with European allies.
Sen. Steve Daines also agreed that Hamas was to blame for the starvation and pressed the importance of Israel getting its hostages back.
“If Hamas wants to solve this problem, they can, and can allow full transport of the aid to the tragic humanitarian crisis occurring,” Daines told NOTUS.
But he called the situation in Gaza “a tragedy.”
Sen. Mike Rounds told NOTUS he agrees with Trump that there is starvation in Gaza. A change to how food is distributed is part of the solution, he said, but he also said Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as “human shields,” which makes it difficult to ensure food gets to them.
“I think there will be some changes in the food distribution systems that are out there, but we most certainly don’t want to see those women and children that are innocent starving, and that’s the picture that we see painted right now,” Rounds said. “It’s unfortunate, but we think the vast majority of Israelis also agree that there’s a better way, and I think that Israel will find a way to eliminate that suffering.”
And Sen. Roger Marshall agreed with Trump that people are starving in Gaza.
“Sure looks like it,” Marshall said of the starvation. “Everything in the pictures that I’ve seen, that would be true, and based on reports coming out of there, it’s hard to tell how bad it is.”
He added that “two or three pictures” didn’t necessarily mean everyone was starving, but that it’d certainly be “consistent with the terrorists who occupy that land to keep the food from getting to the people.”
Marshall added that it was “time for this to all be over.”
“Israel needs to bring this to a conclusion. The killing needs to stop, and this thing needs to be over with,” he said.
While Republicans were clearly focused on blaming Hamas for the hunger issue, just acknowledging the problem was a departure from their prior lockstep agreement with Netanyahu.
But Trump, noting that he’s seen the images on TV of emaciated children, said Monday that “those children look very hungry.”
His counter to Netanyahu, as well as his announcement to set up food centers with European allies, was welcome news to Democrats.
“I don’t often agree with President Trump, but I think him giving Netanyahu a little smack about pretending that there’s no starvation happening was a needed move,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told NOTUS on Monday.
Many Democrats want the administration to restore funding to United Nations agencies that were providing humanitarian aid and supplies in Gaza, rather than supporting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint effort with the Israeli government whose distribution sites have seen violence and stampedes.
Israel announced over the weekend that it would pause military operations daily and open some corridors for aid delivery, though again, Israeli officials denied there was starvation in the Gaza Strip.
In total, 21 Democratic senators signed a letter sent on Sunday asking for answers to a series of oversight questions about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and urging the administration to revert back to the U.N. programs.
But whether the aid Trump wants will continue to flow through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or whether the U.S. will return support to the U.N. remains to be seen. The Trump administration in April slashed significant funding to their support for the U.N. World Food Programme’s work in the Middle East.
Graham told NOTUS last week that he planned to meet with Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme, to discuss getting more aid to Gaza. Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona also told NOTUS on Monday they’ve spoken with McCain.
Kelly said his office had been working on finding the food supplies in the U.S. intended for the Middle East and resolving supply issues that McCain told him about. He added that it was “good” to see Trump acknowledge the starvation in Gaza, but he didn’t have faith in the administration to move the ball forward after Trump made cuts to funding for foreign aid programs like UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“It doesn’t cost us a lot of money in comparison to the size of our budget, and the consequences are starving kids, instability around the world and ultimately more chaos,” Kelly said.
Kelly also said he’d been texting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the situation. Although he wouldn’t go into specifics about the conversations, Kelly said Rubio had “been responsive.”