The U.S. president said that 'Hamas is making it impossible because they are taking everything that’s brought in,' but he failed to mention that Israel has enforced a near total ban on aid for months.
Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder
(LifeSiteNews) -- During a press conference in the Oval Office on Monday, President Donald Trump reiterated his support for medical aid and other humanitarian supplies to reach the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“We're going to help the people of Gaza get some food -- people are starving and we're going to help them get some food,” Trump said.
“Hamas is making it impossible because they are taking everything that’s brought in. But we’re going to help the people because they’re being treated very badly by Hamas.”
Trump was notably silent on the fact that Israel has also treated the people in Gaza “very badly” as the country has enforced a near-total ban on aid to the region for months, claiming that it is necessary to pressure terror group Hamas.
Various countries as well as international agencies have said the policy amounts to planned starvation, with The New York Times reporting that the situation is “catastrophic.”
Trump’s statement is also significant in that he made similar remarks aboard Air Force One last month. While speaking with reporters, the president said he was “pushing” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow medical supplies and food to reach the area.
“I said (on the call with Netanyahu), ‘we’ve got to be good to Gaza. Those people are suffering,'” Trump said. “There’s a very big need for food and medicine.”
On Monday, Israel’s security cabinet unanimously approved a plan to expand its genocidal war to a full-scale military occupation.
According to Haaretz, the plan includes the “capture or takeover of additional areas throughout the strip and the expansion of the buffer zone held by the IDF,” an area where Israeli forces have leveled nearly all buildings, including civilian homes.
LifeSite reporter Patrick Delaney has noted that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich openly declared that Israel intends to “finally occupy the Gaza Strip.”
There will be “no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages,” Smotrich said. “Once we occupy and stay, we can talk about sovereignty.”
Israeli’s plan not only flies in the face of international law but of President Trump’s proposal that the U.S. will go in and “own” the region to act as a sort of peacekeeping force. Presumably, Trump was trying to pre-empt Netanyahu from controlling it.
Netanyahu seems intent on carrying out the plans. He told attendees at the Jewish News Syndicate conference in Jerusalem last month that Israel alone will be controlling the area.
“Israel will … control the area militarily. We’re not going to succumb to any pressure not to do that,” he said.
Whether Netanyahu’s plan will be carried out is another question, however, as hundreds of IDF reservists have signaled their intent to not go along with the plan.
Jonathan Conricus, a former spokesman for the Israeli military, provided similar remarks to The Daily Signal, which is run by the D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.
“I think in (an) interim period, Israel will apply a military occupation of it and rule Gaza to make sure that Hamas is indeed defeated,” he said.
Conricus stunningly blamed Egypt for “enhancing the suffering” of the Palestinian people for not allowing them to flee the war zone. He was silent about the Israeli government’s destruction of the region in the first place and its blockade.
Many social media users and journalists have noted that expanding Israeli’s borders was the aim of Netanyahu’s war all along.
“Israel is openly declaring its genocidal intent to destroy Gaza, ethnically cleanse Palestinians and occupy all of the land. Where is the wall-to-wall coverage in Western media?” author Assal Rad asked.
As early as November 2023, LifeSiteNews reported on an interview with Colonel Douglas Macgregor who assessed that the continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza does not have as its primary aim the rescue of hostages or the destruction of Hamas but of expelling the entire civilian population.
“Making Gaza unlivable is the top priority,” he said at time, before commenting that it's really “the first stage in a multistage operation designed to create ‘greater Israel’ from the Jordan River all the way to the Mediterranean.”
Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder
