GAZA (Dispatched) — A senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has censured the visit of U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to Gaza as a “publicity stunt” aimed at containing growing anger over U.S.-Israeli involvement in the ongoing starvation of people in the besieged territory.
In a statement on Thursday, Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said, “Witkoff only sees in Gaza what the Israeli occupation wants him to see. He views the ongoing tragedy through a distorted Israeli lens.”
He stressed that the US envoy “will not witness the workings of the hunger guillotine known as the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’, nor how it prepares the killing ground for the Zionist war machine.”
Al-Rishq added that the White House’s recent recognition of famine in Gaza — after months of denial — without holding Israel accountable, “amounts to absolving the perpetrator and offering political cover for what is the worst crime in modern history.”
His remarks come as suffering in the besieged enclave worsens, with warnings that hunger has reached extreme levels and reports of rising deaths due to starvation.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), founded in February 2025 amidst the prolonged Israeli assault on Gaza that started in October 2023, is a US-funded initiative working in collaboration with the Israeli military. It has been portrayed as a mechanism to provide humanitarian aid despite the persistent blockade.
Nearly 170 non-governmental organizations have called for the immediate discontinuation of the controversial GHF program, and called for a return to the UN-led aid mechanism that existed in the war-torn territory until March, when the Israeli regime imposed a full blockade on humanitarian assistance entering Gaza.
The UN World Food Program (WFP) has raised the alarm that a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million population faces famine-like conditions.