JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The death toll from hunger continues to climb daily in Gaza. The health ministry there recorded five more deaths from malnutrition in the past 24 hours. And more Israelis protested over the weekend, demanding both a ceasefire and a hostage deal after footage of an Israeli captured in the October 7 attack of 2023 was released by Hamas over the weekend. Joining us now to discuss the latest on the situation in Gaza is NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy. Hi there.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Aya, I'd like to start with the situation in Gaza. Israeli officials continue to insist that there is no starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. They say that this is Hamas propaganda, but tell us what is happening there on the ground.
BATRAWY: Well, despite a week now of those airdrops and a few more trucks entering, people are still going hungry. This aid that is entering is not actually reaching people. Mothers tell us that they still can't find baby formula and that they're too malnourished to breastfeed. Our producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, was at a hospital in Gaza City today. He met a woman with a severely malnourished child - one of the many children in Gaza whose bones are now poking through their skin. Have to listen to what she told him.
DINA RADAB: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Dina Radab says there is real famine in Gaza, that their children need food and supplements. She wants more of Gaza's border crossings open so aid can roll in. She has a 3 1/2-year-old daughter who she says was normal and healthy before the war, but now her and her daughter both go to sleep hungry.
Now, people are also risking their lives to get food. Tens of thousands of people every day are clamoring at this northern border crossing with Israel hoping to just grab a sack of flour off of the few trucks Israel's allowing in. Over the weekend, the health ministry says more than 130 people seeking food aid were killed, many of them shot by Israeli forces near that crossing. That's according to survivors and what our own producer, Anas Baba, there saw. Now, Israel's military says repeatedly that its troops only fire warning shots when crowds are near.
SUMMERS: And Hamas and Islamic Jihad recently released videos of two Israeli hostages who also appear to be wasting away from hunger. What has the reaction been in Israel to that?
BATRAWY: Tens of thousands of Israelis were protesting in Tel Aviv. There are growing numbers of people now speaking out against the war. You've got top writers, the presidents of Israeli universities. And today, 500 retired Israeli generals and former security officials wrote an open letter to Trump calling on him to end the war and saying Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat.
But Netanyahu hasn't changed his tone. That's Israel's prime minister. He says Hamas is to blame, and he is not indicating that he's willing to end the war. And I will say this, members of his government are still calling for the war to continue and for Palestinians to leave the territory. So there is some pressure building on Netanyahu to end the war, but he's actually seized on those images of the hostages, those two Israeli male hostages, to say he's even more determined now to stay the course.
SUMMERS: So Aya, with people starving in Gaza and ceasefire talks stalled, where can this go next?
BATRAWY: So there is pressure building on Israel to end the war. This is mostly from European countries, as well as the U.K. and Canada and France, which recently said they would recognize the state of Palestine unless Israel, you know, changed its war in Gaza and ended the war there and conditions improved. But with every day that passes, you know, more people are being killed in Gaza, either trying to get food or dying of hunger or from airstrikes that continue. The death toll there is about to hit 61,000 people killed, according to the health ministry in this war.
Now, President Trump has talked about starvation in Gaza. He's called it horrible. But he's also blaming Hamas for stalled ceasefire talks, and his Republican base remains very supportive of Israel. Today, we saw the house speaker, Mike Johnson, on a private visit to the West Bank at a settlement, speaking at a conference there. This is the highest level U.S. official to ever visit a Jewish settlement, according to Israeli press. And according to them, he said that this land of the West Bank is the rightful property of the Jewish people.
SUMMERS: NPR's Aya Batrawy, thank you.
BATRAWY: Thank you, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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