STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump's Middle East envoy, and Mike Huckabee, who is the U.S. ambassador to Israel, are in Gaza today, both of them visiting a U.S.-Israeli-backed food distribution site as international outrage over starvation grows.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Israeli government says claims of starvation are exaggerated. Negotiations to release hostages and pause the war continue.
INSKEEP: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley is following all of this from Tel Aviv. Hi, Eleanor.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hello, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. Where are the diplomats going?
BEARDSLEY: Well, we've received a picture of the GHF, the Gaza Humanitarian Facility. These are the food distribution sites run by the Israeli army and U.S. contractors.
INSKEEP: Right.
BEARDSLEY: We got a photo and a video being distributed by the army. It's taken from a ways back, and it shows a site set up amidst sand dunes. You can see soldiers, barriers and a line of Palestinians waiting, including women. Now, we've been told by our reporter on the ground there, Anas Baba, that the number of people in the photo is about a tenth of the number of people who usually crowd the site. The picture looks orderly, but we've seen other videos and reporting from such sites that show chaos. And as we know, a number of Palestinians have been shot at these sites, trying to get food. And critics are calling this a propaganda visit by the army.
INSKEEP: Now, this is very, very interesting. But in any case, the envoy and the ambassador are going. They're representing President Trump, who himself has said he believes the reports of starvation out of Gaza, believes the pictures, the images that he has seen. All of this is happening during an ongoing military operation, military conflict. People had been talking in terms of looking for a ceasefire in that conflict. Where do negotiations stand?
BEARDSLEY: Well, Hamas says people are starving and they'll fully negotiate when aid gets in. They're clearly using this for their purposes - the international outrage - but aid groups do say that the aid is not getting in. It's a drop in the bucket of what needs to come in. We're hearing something different, Steve, from the Israeli side. Israeli media's reporting senior officials say there's no longer time for, quote, "partial deals." And an anonymous senior Israeli official told NPR that an understanding is emerging between Israel and the U.S. that the approach must shift from a framework for the release of some hostages to a release of all of them. So there's sort of a change in language. Israeli media is reporting that the government is laying the diplomatic and information groundwork not for a ceasefire, but for a renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip.
INSKEEP: OK. How are Israelis reacting to all of this news?
BEARDSLEY: Well, the government, as you say, continues to deny there's starvation, calling it an international propaganda campaign against Israel. And the Israeli population - the majority doesn't really think there's real famine. Either people still talk about Hamas stealing the aid - I spoke with columnist Gideon Levy at Haaretz newspaper yesterday. His columns are widely read in English. He told me Haaretz is the only media outlet in Israel reporting on the starvation and what's really going on. Here he is.
GIDEON LEVY: You know, the last American in Omaha, Nebraska, saw more of Gaza than an average Israeli in Tel Aviv. We are a one-hour drive from Gaza, and Israelis have no clue what's going on there. And they don't want to know what's going on there.
BEARDSLEY: Now, Steve, last night I was at a large demonstration in Tel Aviv specifically to end the war on the starvation, one of the first like this where the hostages weren't the main focus. Protesters held signs of starving children. And - but people admitted, we're the minority. Most people don't know what's going on, and here's 62-year-old Julia Resnik (ph) explaining why.
JULIA RESNIK: Because they don't want to be the bad guys. They were raised believing we are good; we are moral, the most moral army in the world. And then you shoot people waiting for food, and so they prefer not to know. If I don't see it, it's not happening.
BEARDSLEY: And, Steve, I'm going to add that NPR saw passers by spitting at these protesters and a mother recoiling and snatching her children back from it.
INSKEEP: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley. Thanks for your reporting, as always.
BEARDSLEY: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: She's in Tel Aviv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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