On Friday, US envoy Steve Witkoff and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited an aid site in southern Gaza run by the scandal-plagued Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. At least 859 Palestinians have been gunned down by Israeli soldiers while attempting to receive aid parcels at the distribution points.

Witkoff said the purpose of the trip was to give Trump “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.

“Incredible feat!” Huckabee said in a post on X on Friday, after touring GHF’s operations and speaking to “folks on the ground”. 

Palestinians denounced the visit as a PR stunt.

“It was a PR stunt, a controlled visit supervised and dictated by the Israeli military,” Ellie Burgos, an American critical care nurse volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told NBC News. “What they saw was not the reality.”

Amer Khayrat, a father of two who lives in Gaza City, told the BBC: “What Gaza needs isn’t another envoy with a press team. We need the siege lifted, the bombing stopped and the blind American support for this war brought to an end.”

Scott Paul, Oxfam’s Americas director of peace and security, told the BBC that Witkoff and Huckabee would have been “confronted by scenes of countless Palestinian children and their families on the brink of starvation displaced in flattened communities outside their convoy windows”.

“This must be what finally spurs the US to use its full influence to put an end to this catastrophe before we pass the point of no return,” he added.

On Saturday, Witkoff met with families of Israeli captives held in Gaza in Tel Aviv, as hundreds took to the streets to demand a ceasefire deal, the Israeli daily Haaretz is reporting.

The visit shortly followed footage of emaciated Israeli captives, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski published by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Witkoff assured the families that US will push for a single hostage deal. In a recording of the meeting, Witkoff can be heard saying that “Hamas has said that they are prepared to be demilitarised” and that “multiple Arab governments are now demanding Hamas demilitarise”.

“We are very, very close to a solution to end this war,” he said, adding that “we don’t believe that Hamas speaks for the people … We believe that they have very little political support”.

Hamas responded with a statement saying : “We reiterate that resistance and disarmament are a national and legal right as long as the occupation continues.

“This right is recognised in international treaties and norms, and cannot be waived except upon the achievement of all our national rights, foremost among them the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital.”