The New Yorker:

Senator Chris Van Hollen describes what he witnessed on the Egypt-Gaza border.

By Isaac Chotiner

Last week, the Democratic senators Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen travelled to the Rafah border crossing in Egypt, the entry point for many of the aid trucks into the Gaza Strip. The humanitarian situation in Gaza, where more than twenty-three thousand people are estimated to have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, is extremely dire, and the number of trucks full of food and medicine and other vital goods is insufficient. As recently as Thursday, the United Nations reported that only a hundred and forty-five trucks entered Gaza through Rafah and Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, which is close to Rafah, but on the Israeli side; human-rights groups have stated that more than three times that many are required. Israel contends that aid trucks have to be closely scrutinized to insure that weapons are not being smuggled into Gaza, but after watching the inspection process at Rafah, Merkley and Van Hollen called the Israeli approach “arbitrary.”

I recently spoke by phone with Senator Van Hollen, of Maryland, who was elected to the position in 2016, after serving seven terms in the House of Representatives. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his view of the problems with the American-Israeli relationship, why so little aid is reaching Gazans, and whether Israel is concerned with the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

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