| The 5-Minute Fix will be on vacation these next couple of days and back in your inbox Wednesday, Aug. 5. We love helping you make sense of the day’s biggest political news. What are you curious about? Sixty thousand people, a majority of whom were women and children, have died in Gaza since the war started nearly two years ago, according to local health authorities. Some Israeli rights groups say their government is committing genocide in Gaza. And horrific images of children with hollow eyes and protruding bones, and stories of babies dying of hunger, are raising alarms around the world about mass starvation. Roughly a third of the Gaza population is going multiple days without eating, according to the United Nations. This is what may be moving President Donald Trump and some in the Republican Party away from their isolationist approach to global problems and even, in this moment, their unconditional support for Israel. “There is no starvation in Gaza,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week. “Some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake that,” Trump said a day later while visiting Scotland. Support for Israel has been Republican orthodoxy, one that Trump has been generally happy to uphold. In his first presidency, he ordered the U.S. Embassy in Israel to move to Jerusalem, a politically significant move for Israel. Now, contradicting Israel’s prime minister when the country is in the middle of a war is also politically significant. “It raises the question about what had been a fundamental given across the political spectrum, which is support for Israel,” said Mona Yacoubian, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Trump has some political cover back home to speak up. “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), who has pitched herself as the upholder of MAGA values in Congress, said in a social media post this week. One thing that may have brought about the president’s comments: the widespread images of children starving to death. Early on in his first term, pictures of the aftermath of a chemical attack in Syria that targeted many children spurred Trump to launch missile strikes directed at Syria’s leader. “I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me — big impact,” he said at the time. It’s not clear what steps he is taking now to ease starvation in Gaza. He has made vague promises, including suggesting this week he was talking to Israel about “trying to get things straightened out.” He sent the top U.S. negotiator to Israel and said the United States would set up “food centers.” But he also complained that he wasn’t thanked enough for the aid the U.S. has already given. “We’re giving them money and stuff,” he said. The next frontier in pressuring Israel to ease suffering in Gaza is recognizing a Palestinian state. Trump has said this isn’t an option. His argument is the same as Israel’s: that it would legitimize Hamas, which attacked Israel two years ago, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 others hostage. The U.S. has designated Hamas a terrorist organization. He even made it a sticking point on entirely separate trade negotiations with Canada: “Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine,” Trump posted on social media early Thursday morning. “That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them.” Yet Trump could soon be isolated on this. In the past week alone, Canada, Britain and France said they would recognize Palestine as a state — a dramatic action that Israel’s closest allies had mostly resisted for decades. Even though a majority of the world recognizes the Palestinian people as their own nation, the center of power at the United Nations, the Security Council, hasn’t. But the United States could soon be the only permanent member of the Security Council that doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state. “I think there is growing frustration by the international community with these catastrophic impacts, demanding that this chapter of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, namely the current war in Gaza, is drawn to a close, that it’s just gone on too long,” Yacoubian said. “It speaks to just how bad the situation on the ground is in Gaza.” She cautioned, though, that the pressure on Israel could instead cause the country to dig in and prolong an end to the war and starvation in Gaza. “They might feel like they are caving to international pressure, and it could steel Israeli resolve against moving forward on a ceasefire,” Yacoubian said. While there’s been an uptick globally in recognizing a Palestinian state, there are still some on the American right who oppose the U.S. joining that call. “Recognition is a lie,” said Daniel Samet, a fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said in an email. “It’s rewarding terrorism and discouraging much-needed Palestinian political reforms that would actually benefit residents of the West Bank and Gaza. President Trump and his administration know this.” | 
