What reporting in Gaza shows amid Trump's break from Netanyahu on starvation

0:00New light has emerged between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump. On Sunday, Netanyahu reasserted this claim. Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza. What a bold-faced lie. By Monday, Trump was among the Western leaders rejecting that claim. That's real starvation stuff. I see it. And you can't fake that. President Trump joined British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a visit to Scotland and said the crisis is evident. Those children look very hungry, but we're giving a lot of money and a lot of food, and other nations are now stepping up.

0:43I know that this nation is right here. It's a humanitarian crisis. It's an absolute catastrophe. And the humanitarian crisis has only intensified after ceasefire talks broke down again last week. Trump said he thought a ceasefire was still possible. I told Israel, I told Bibi, that you're going to have to now maybe do it a different way. Trump said the U.S. would work with its European partners to address the crisis in Gaza and that the U.S. would set up centers with, quote, no boundaries where people could walk in for food. But consider this. Even as global outrage and assistance grows, aid agencies say only a total ceasefire will allow all the necessary aid to get to those who desperately need it in Gaza.

1:29After the break, we'll hear from NPR reporters on the ground.

1:36From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

1:46It's Consider This from NPR. Under intense international pressure, Israel announced over the weekend it would begin a daily 10-hour pause in fighting to allow the delivery of some aid to people in Gaza. Now, Gaza has been sealed off from international journalists since Israel launched the war. Over the weekend, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley was allowed rare access by the Israeli military, the IDF, as the Israelis responded to international outrage over the earlier bloc of aid. What Eleanor saw was far from a clear picture. I've come into Gaza with the IDF. We've had an escort. We were brought in in trucks.

2:28We're wearing our gear, our flak jacket and our helmets. I can hear shooting like tank fire and small gunfire in the distance. This is a desolate place that feels like the end of the earth. There's rotting oil, beans, baby formula diapers just stacked up, rotting in the sun. There are birds picking at it. The IDF cited that scene as proof that the United Nations is not doing its job to distribute the aid. Here's Elon Levy, an Israeli government spokesperson. Israel has called the UN's bluff because here are hundreds and hundreds of pallets of aid that the UN is letting rot in the sun. And instead of taking responsibility for that failure, fessing up, they're blaming Israel and pretending that Israel isn't letting this aid in altogether.

3:16The UN put out a statement saying it was impossible to deliver the aid under what it called extremely challenging circumstances that put civilians and aid workers at tremendous risk. The U.N. Human Rights Office says more than 1 ,000 Palestinians have been killed, trying to access food since May, mostly near-distribution sites run by the U.S. and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Brigadier General Effie Deferin, an Israeli Army spokesperson, spoke to the group of journalists in Gaza and said they are closely monitoring events. He said conditions are hard for Palestinians, but he, like other Israeli government officials, claims there is no starvation.

3:59We've seen the pictures coming out of Gaza. It's breaking our hearts. But most of it is fake. Fake, distributed by Hamas. It's a campaign. Unfortunately, some of the Israeli media, including international media, is distributing this information and those false pictures and creating an image of starvation which doesn't exist. However, the United Nations says about 90 ,000 women and children are severely malnourished in Gaza and need immediate medical care. NPR's Anas Baba, who lives in Gaza City, sent us this report, and listeners should know it includes descriptions and sounds of people, including children, suffering in war.

4:41In this tent by the sea, Hidayah al-Mutawwak tries to offer what comfort she can to her youngest child. one-and-a-half-year-old Muhammad.

4:55She don't have anything. The child that he weighs less than four-and-a-half kilograms, his mother is feeding him water, only water, and she's all of the time trying to tell the world that the famine and the malnutrition is hitting severely in Gaza and spreading and stop.

5:19Muhammad is nearly all born. His eyes protruding, his spine so sharp and so defined. It seems it might poke through his thin skin. Muhammad's older sister is doing okay. But he's so young, his small body has not been able to withstand the hunger. All the hospitals in Gaza told his mother they had nothing left. No food, no milk to give her. So she cradles Muhammad, strokes his thinning hair. but what he needs is to eat. She no longer has breast milk because she's malnourished.

5:57This is just one family and Gaza has about one million children. That's about half of the population. Israel says it's slitting in food through its own distribution program. Backed by the US but the system does not reach many people and has been deadly for many Palestinians with dozens of people this week alone killed by Israeli gunfire. This war is scarring a generation of children, says Ahmed Al-Farra, a doctor who heads the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. A generation of children who are below three years because the central nervous system is nearly composed in these three years.

6:39If these children survive, Al-Farra worries they will suffer from neurological impairments brought by the starvation. Like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, difficulty in school performance, in comprehension, speaking. Selwa Shamali is a 20 years old which makes her one of the older siblings in her family here in Gaza. She spends all her time trying to find ways to keep her young siblings alive.

7:11She says, I care more about food than water. I don't care about the news. Half of our family are young children and we think of them more. Shamali's days are dictated by the never-ending search for food and water.

7:28She says at 6am they can sometimes get water and at 2pm my brothers try to get food from a local charity or school. At 6pm her father ventures out but usually comes back with nothing.

7:46Hidayah Al-Mutawwak's world is even smaller.

7:54It's distant by the Mediterranean Sea, trying to keep one and a half year old Muhammad alive. Al-Mutawwak was displaced here after her husband was killed in Israel's war in Gaza. She had lost her home, her livelihood, but she had her two children, and she wants to keep them both alive. Anas Barber, NPR News, Gaza City.