WASHINGTON AP - Senate Democrats are imploring President Donald Trump's administration to step up its role in addressing suffering and starvation in Gaza, with more than three dozen senators signing onto a letter Tuesday urging the resumption of ceasefire talks and sharply criticizing an Israeli-backed American organization that had been created to distribute food aid.
In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Republican president's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, the senators said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created in February with backing from the Trump administration, has "failed to address the deepening humanitarian crisis and contributed to an unacceptable and mounting civilian death toll around the organization's sites."
It marked a mostly united plea from Senate Democrats - who are locked out of power in Washington - for the Trump administration to recalibrate its approach after the collapse of ceasefire talks last week. Trump on Monday expressed concern about the worsening humanitarian situation and broke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that people are not starving in the Gaza Strip. But it is unclear how Trump will proceed.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said it was "not at all credible" to think the Israeli military - one of the most advanced in the world - is incapable of distributing food aid or performing crowd control.
"They made a choice to establish a new way of doing food distribution," he said. "And it's not working at all."