Aid workers feel helpless as Israel's blockade pushes Gaza towards famine

BEIRUT (AP) — Two cases pushed nutritionist Rana Soboh to wits' end. First, a woman was rushed to a Gaza emergency room after fainting while she breastfed her newborn. She told Soboh she hadn’t eaten in days.

The next day at another medical facility, Soboh found a severely malnourished 1-year-old boy weighing 5 kilograms (11 pounds), less than half what's normal. He hadn’t grown any teeth. He was too weak to cry. The mother was also malnourished, “a skeleton, covered in skin.”

When the mother asked for food, Soboh started crying uncontrollably.

A feeling of powerlessness has overwhelmed her. Soboh said sometimes she gives a little money or a bit of her own food. But now she, too, is struggling.

“This is the worst feeling, wanting to help but knowing you can’t. I wished the earth would crack open and swallow me,” she said. “What more cruel scenes does the world need to see?”

After months of trying to raise alarm, humanitarian workers are overflowing with anger, frustration and horror over Israel’s nearly three-month blockade of Gaza. The Associated Press spoke to over a dozen aid workers, some with years of experience in emergencies around the world and Palestinians who have worked through this and other wars.

They say what is happening in Gaza is a catastrophe, among the worst they have ever seen. It’s more painful, they say, because it’s man-made, caused by Israel cutting off all food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to the territory nearly 11 weeks ago.

The world’s top authority on food crises last week warned of famine unless the blockade ends. Almost the entire population of around 2.3 million is acutely malnourished, and one in five Palestinians are on the brink of starvation, it said.

Israel on Sunday said it would allow a “basic” amount of food into Gaza, saying it didn’t want a “starvation crisis” to jeopardize its new military offensive. The first few trucks entered Monday, as Israel acknowledged pressure from allies. It was not immediately clear how much would be allowed in, or when, or how.

Israel says it imposed the blockade to force Hamas to release hostages, a decision that rights groups call a “starvation tactic” and a violation of international law.

Aid workers are also wrestling with moves by Israel and the U.S. to impose a new aid system, despite their objections. The system would limit distribution to a few locations and put it under armed private contractors — to prevent theft by Hamas, Israel says. Humanitarian workers say it won’t meet Gaza’s needs and violates humanitarian principles. The U.N. denies that significant aid diversion takes place.

The workers say they should be allowed to do their jobs. Some 170,000 metric tons of aid, including food, sits in trucks a few miles away, just inside Israel.

“The humanitarian community is well-experienced and well-versed in terms of treating malnutrition,” said Rachel Cummings, emergency coordinator for Save the Children in Gaza. But “we need food into Gaza and to stop this, by design, attack on the children across the whole of Gaza.”

Community kitchens are the last lifeline for most people, but more than 60% have shut down as supplies run out. Those still working can only produce 260,000 meals a day.

At his kitchen in Khan Younis, Nihad Abu Kush and 10 cooks prepare enough meals for about 1,000 people a day. More than 2,000 show up every morning, he said.

There are no lines, just a sea of people terrified of being among the half who will miss out. They push and shove, waving pots for portions from the vats of lentils, beans or peas in tomato sauce.

“I feel so helpless because the numbers grow every day,” Abu Kush said. “I look at their faces and I am unable to do anything.”

On a recent day, he gave up his own portion after he locked eyes with a child with an empty pot. “I was among the 1,000 who didn’t get any,” Abu Kush said.

Soboh, a nutritionist with MedGlobal, said her team stretches supplies of malnutrition treatments. Each can of baby formula is divided among several mothers. Therapy food portions are reduced by half. They give supplements only to children up to a year old, no longer up to 2.

But their fixes get overwhelmed in the rising need.

Staff try to dissuade mothers too weak to breastfeed from giving newborns sugar water, which can cause deadly diarrhea and infections, Soboh said.

But it’s the mothers’ only alternative. Flour sold in the markets is rotten, full of insects, devoid of nutrition and enormously expensive. Still, if they find the cash, parents take risky trips to get it just to fill their children’s stomachs, she said.

Aid groups distributing water have reduced daily allowances to 5 liters a day per person, a third of the minimum in emergency conditions. Families must choose between using water to drink, wash hands or to cook, risking infection.

Mahmoud al-Saqqa, Oxfam's food security sector coordinator, said parents tell him their kids are dizzy from lack of food. They search through garbage for scraps.

“We see the hunger in their eyes," he said. His group, like most, distributed its last food stocks weeks ago.

One of Soboh's colleagues, Fady Abed, said desperate adults in his neighborhood ask him for the nutty-butter bars used to treat severely malnourished children to slake their own hunger.

“You feel like you let them down” refusing them, Abed said. He struggles to feed his own family.

“Fear of famine," he said, "is in every home.”

Medical workers improvise alternatives as supplies run out and machines break down.

Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza lacks fuel and oxygen cylinders, so staff use hand-pumped respirators to keep patients breathing, said hospital director Mohammed Salha.

Staff took turns hand-pumping air for one patient for 72 hours straight. The patient still died.

“People are dying ... because we simply don’t have the basics,” he said.

At Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, doctors don’t have drills, sealant or titanium plates to treat the many skull fractures from bombardment.

They use expired gelatins to stop bleeding, but that doesn’t stop spinal fluid from leaking, which can be deadly, said a foreign doctor volunteering with the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Sometimes, there’s nothing he can do. He has child patients whose cochlear implants are defective, but there’s no way to replace them. Without them, “they will never be able to develop normal speech,” he said.

The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations from his organization to avoid reprisals from Israeli authorities.

Israel has cut in half the number of foreign doctors allowed into Gaza since March.

Israel imposed the blockade and resumed its military campaign in March, breaking a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of overseeing aid, did not comment to the AP. Israeli officials have said they track the calories in Gaza and assert that there is enough aid after an influx during the ceasefire.

Israel and the United States are pressing the U.N. and aid groups to join the planned new distribution system. The U.N. and most aid groups say they can't join because it enables Israel to use aid as a weapon for its political and military goals.

In particular, it would depopulate much of Gaza by forcing Palestinians to move to planned distribution hubs.

“In the end, this is using food to humiliate, control and direct people,” said al-Saqqa of Oxfam. “Every human being has the right to food.”

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

A little boy is fed by his mother with food from a community kitchen at the Muwasi camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

A woman receives painkillers at a U.N. medical point in the Muwasi camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians struggle to receive cooked food distributed at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

FILE.- Trucks line up at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip after Israel blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza, Sunday, March 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohamed Arafat,File)

A boy scrapes leftovers from an empty pot after all the meals were distributed at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.

Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.

Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.

“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.

About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.

Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.

The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.

Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.

In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.

“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.

Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.

The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.

Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.

"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.

There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.

The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."

Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.

Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.

Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)