Mark Kelly Warns Gaza Aid 'Needs To Be Continuous' Or Palestinian Children Will 'Starve To Death'

On Sunday, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper.

Transcript

00:00Let me ask you about a big international issue, the starvation crisis in Gaza, man-made crisis.

00:07Overnight the government of Israel said they will begin to open additional humanitarian

00:12quarters for the purpose of getting additional aid into Gaza.

00:15We've obviously been seeing these horrific images of Palestinian children starving and

00:20suffering from malnutrition.

00:21I know you've been in close contact with Cindy McCain, the head of the UN World Food Program,

00:26who obviously is from Arizona.

00:28What is Cindy McCain telling you about the situation in Gaza?

00:32And are you satisfied with the latest news from Israel?

00:35And what do you think the United States should be doing?

00:38Yeah, well, I talked to her text with Cindy, who is the head of the World Food Program,

00:45you know, weekly.

00:46Even just this morning, I was sharing some information with her that we received from

00:51the Israeli embassy in Washington about what they plan to do.

00:57So I'm trying to help with the communication here.

00:59She's under a tremendous amount, her organization, a tremendous amount of stress and, you know,

01:06just kind of dislocation of the resources that she had.

01:11The rescissions package that you mentioned with Russ Vogt, you know, cut money for UNICEF.

01:17The doge cuts cut somewhere around 40 percent of Cindy McCain's budget at the World Food Program.

01:25So weekly, she's trying to figure out where does she put resources to keep children alive.

01:31It is a horrible situation.

01:33And we should never see this kind of starvation across the planet for anybody.

01:38But to see kids starving, I've seen this personally in the DRC when I traveled there with Gabby about

01:45a decade ago, it is a horrific thing to see and we have to do better.

01:50Her challenge is she often can't get the aid into Gaza.

01:54Now, the Israeli government says they're going to have this, like, temporary ceasefire to try

02:01to move more aid in, aid needs to be continuous.

02:06It can't be just a one-time thing.

02:07They're going to drop some aid from airplanes, but we need to have a continuous supply of food

02:14into Gaza or these children are going to starve to death.