The Hamas Movement has sharply criticized the recent visit of US envoy Steve Witkoff to aid distribution centers in the Gaza Strip, denouncing it as a “pre-scripted show” aimed at misleading international opinion and covering up the Israeli occupation’s starvation policies against Palestinians.

In a statement issued Saturday, Hamas said the visit to facilities managed by the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” was designed to “polish the image of the occupation” while providing “political cover to manage starvation and continue systematic killings of children and unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

The Movement stressed that Witkoff’s remarks and the promotional images portraying orderly aid distribution do not reflect the reality on the ground. “These claims are belied by the fact that over 1,300 starving civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers and employees of the inhuman Gaza Foundation, which was established to continue acts of killing and extermination,” the statement said.

Hamas accused the US administration of being “fully complicit in the crime of starvation and genocide” in Gaza, urging Washington to “assume its historic responsibility, lift the cover off this crime of the era, and work toward a ceasefire that ends the aggression, secures the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and lifts the unjust siege on our people.”

The statement warned that continued US alignment with “Israeli policies and violations” would only “deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and perpetuate the conflict in Palestine and the region.”

Addressing reports quoting Witkoff as saying that Hamas had expressed readiness to disarm, the Movement firmly rejected the claim. “Resistance and its weapons are a national and legal entitlement as long as the occupation exists, recognized by international laws and conventions, and cannot be abandoned except upon full restoration of our national rights—foremost of which is the establishment of a fully sovereign, independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Hamas asserted. (ILKHA)