File Photo: Trucks carrying humanitarian aid line up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip. AFP
The visitors, US Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley, among the most outspoken in their party against Israel’s blockade and the man-made famine unfolding in Gaza, are visiting Egypt as part of a broader Mideast tour that also includes Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Jordan.
Van Hollen, a senior member of the Senate foreign relations and appropriations committees, has recently described life in the Gaza Strip as “hell on earth”, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to immediately restore the United Nations-led aid distribution.
He has led more than 20 Democratic Senators in urging the Trump administration to halt funding for the controversial US-Israeli so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), where Israeli soldiers have killed hundreds of desperate aid seekers since mid-May.
Van Hollen has described the GHF operation as a “death trap” for Palestinians and demanded that the delivery of aid to the strip be restored to United Nations (UN) agencies.
The senators arrived at Al-Arish airport on Saturday before heading to the border, according to Al-Qahera News.
“We are on a descent into a massive famine,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Friday, urging that “massive amounts of food” be brought in and safely distributed.
“They all need food … there would not have been declared famine had there been sufficient amounts.”
More than 322 Palestinians — over 121 of them children — have died from malnutrition since October 2023, with most fatalities recorded in the past five months.
The UN projects that by the end of September, 640,000 people will face Phase 5 conditions, classified as famine or humanitarian catastrophe.
Another one million are expected to be in Phase 4 (emergency), and nearly 400,000 are expected to be in Phase 3 (crisis).
Additionally, it projected number of children at risk of death tripling since last May to 43,400 by June 2026.
Aid agencies say Israeli restrictions and obstructions compound the crisis.
Since May 2024, when Israel seized the Palestinian side of Rafah, all convoys have been diverted through the Israeli-controlled Karm Abu Salem terminal.
More than 5,000 trucks are now stranded on the Egyptian side of Rafah, with food stocks spoiling in warehouses.
North Sinai governor Khaled Megawer said on Saturday that “the Egyptian side of the crossing has never closed,” stressing that Israel’s obstruction is the sole reason for the backlog.
He added that Egypt continues to provide medical services to the wounded evacuated from Gaza.
Egypt has contributed more than 70 percent of all aid entering the strip, delivering over 45,000 trucks carrying upwards of half a million tonnes of food and medical supplies.
This includes shipments through the Egyptian Red Crescent’s(ERC) Zad El-Ezza: From Egypt to Gaza initiative, which has dispatched 25 convoys since late July.
Earlier this month, members of the peace advocacy group The Elders reported seeing aid piled up in ERC warehouses in Arish.
They heard truck drivers describe being turned back by Israeli forces without explanation.
Israel’s genocidal war on the strip has killed at least 63,000 Gazans and injured 160,000, primarily women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Over 9,000 Palestinians remain missing.
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