Govt. Agencies Found Israel Blocked Gaza Aid. Blinken Told Congress Otherwise
A 17-page memo from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) detailed instances of Israel deliberately interfering with humanitarian aid efforts including the killing of aid workers, bombing hospitals, and denying trucks carrying food and medicine from entering Gaza, where the United Nations has declared a “full-blown famine” in the northern region.
In April, USAID sent their findings to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau determination was made known to top diplomats. U.S. law requires that the government suspend weapons shipments to any country blocking U.S.-backed humanitarian assistance. Despite the memo and list of evidence cited, Blinken rejected the assessment, ProPublica reported on Tuesday.
Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, President Biden and his administration have continually emphasized its commitment to a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza. Since the Israeli cabinet declared war against Hamas, however, the U.S. has delivered more than 50,000 tons of missiles, artillery, and other military equipment, Israel’s Defense Ministry stated last month.
ProPublica wrote that both Blinken and the Biden administration did not accept the findings from the U.S. government’s top two authorities on humanitarian aid. In Blinken’s statement to Congress on May 10, he said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
According to a copy obtained by ProPublica of a cable between U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and Blinken, the ambassador expressed that Israel’s war cabinet, comprising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, should be trusted to handle humanitarian shipments to Palestinians in Gaza. Despite assessing that “Israel will not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede U.S. provided or supported” shipments of food and medicine, Lew wrote that “other parts of the Israeli government have tried to impede the movement of [humanitarian assistance.]”
A former senior civil military adviser in the refugees bureau, who worked on different versions of Blinken’s statement to Congress, resigned over the final version’s conclusion. “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” Stacy Gilbert said in a statement shortly after her departure. “To deny this is absurd and shameful.”
On the day Blinken sent his report to Congress, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, (D-MD), denounced the administration for choosing “to disregard the requirements” of the National Security Memorandum, or NSM-20. “Whether or not Israel is at this moment complying with international standards with respect to facilitating humanitarian assistance to desperate, starving citizens may be debatable,” he wrote in a statement. “What is undeniable — for those who don’t look the other way — is that it has repeatedly violated those standards over the last 7 months.”
Among the evidence listed in the memo was a report that lifesaving food had been stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border in an Israeli port — enough flour to feed 1.5 Palestinians for five months. In February, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued a directive to block deliveries of flour to the main U.N. agency for Palestinians and cited allegations that some of its employees were affiliated with Hamas.
At least 930 trucks of food, medicine, and other aid were held in Egypt awaiting approval from Israel as of March, USAID’s memo detailed. The memo to Blinken also cited numerous incidents in which aid facilities and workers were hit by airstrikes even after some had shared their locations and received approval from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Israel’s government has insisted that most of those violent incidents were unintentional.
On April 1, seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers were killed by an Israeli strike while delivering aid to Gaza. The workers were traveling in two armored cars branded with the charity’s logo in a de-conflicted zone, WCK said in a statement following the deadly tragedy. The seven killed were from Australia, Poland, United Kingdom, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and Palestine. “Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route,” the statement read.
WCK CEO Erin Gore wrote, “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war.”
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