When US President Donald Trump, the most ardent supporter of Israel in its war on Hamas, openly questions the narrative about the famine in Gaza being promoted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is very probable nobody believes it.

Asked at the weekend if he agreed with Netanyahu’s assertion that it was a “stone-faced lie” to claim that Israel was fueling hunger in Gaza, Trump said: “Those children look very hungry… that’s real starvation stuff.” A little later on the same day, he said, “the whole place is a mess… I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way.”

Trump might not have blamed Israel directly for the starvation in Gaza but there is nobody else that can take responsibility for what is happening. It is the Israel government that prevented humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for 11 weeks, from early March to late May, on the grounds that Hamas had taken control of the food distribution.

This responsibility was given to the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which engaged in food distribution at the end of May, but the operation was not successful, often ending in the shooting of people trying to collect food. By mid-July, the UN human rights office OHCHR reported that it “recorded 875 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 674 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites.”

So while some humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza by Israel, which bowed to international pressure for fear of losing the propaganda war, it is nowhere near enough to end the starvation suffered by thousands of Palestinians. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – an international initiative working with 21 aid groups and UN agencies to assess hunger levels – said earlier this week: “The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza strip.” It called for an immediate ceasefire to alleviate “widespread starvation”.

Malnutrition had killed 79 people in Gaza in the last week according to Gaza’s health authorities. “Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under the age of five, with at least 16 reported deaths,” said the IPC, and since April, 20,000 children were admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition.

Numbers about the suffering in Gaza are routinely disputed by Israel which argues that Hamas cannot be trusted to give accurate figures. Pictures of malnourished, starving Palestinian children cannot be dismissed as fake or as propaganda. Even President Trump recognises there is a very big problem, for which Israel’s government is exclusively to blame.

The escalating starvation in Gaza, even Israel’s allies say, is caused by the two-and-a-half-month total blockade of the strip, followed by the monopolising of aid distribution by the ineffective US-backed GHF. Needless to say, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) blamed food shortages in Gaza on distribution failure by the UN. On Tuesday, the IDF posted footage which it said showed Hamas “violently looting humanitarian aid”.

These are deflection tactics. Everyone knows Israel has caused the starvation in Gaza and only Israel can prevent a full-scale famine. The UN said the scale of aid needed to stave off famine and prevent a health crisis is vast. Whether Netanyahu will allow adequate humanitarian through is another matter.