U.S. Warns Israel to Boost Humanitarian Aid Into Gaza or Face Consequences

by · NY Times

U.S. Warns Israel to Increase Aid to Gaza or Face Consequences

The warning was conveyed in a letter sent Sunday to two top Israeli officials that included the possibility of a cutoff of U.S. military aid, officials said.

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Palestinians walking through rubble in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, in May. The city is again a focus of Israeli military operations.
Credit...Enas Rami/Associated Press

By Michael Crowley and David E. Sanger

Reporting from Washington

The Biden administration warned Israel over the weekend that a failure to allow the delivery of more humanitarian aid within 30 days to the nearly two million people trapped in Gaza could trigger a cutoff of military aid, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

The sharply worded warning was sent on Sunday in a letter signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, rather than President Biden. It was addressed to Israel’s minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, and its minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer.

The decision not to put the letter in Mr. Biden’s name, some aides said, may provide a level of insulation for Vice President Kamala Harris, who as the Democratic nominee for president has walked a fine line, declining to issue any threats to Israel even while urging that the war must end quickly, in part to end the “heartbreaking” loss of Palestinian lives.

The written warning comes just three weeks before the U.S. presidential election, amid a campaign in which some progressives in the party say Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris should be pressing Israel much harder to prevent civilian deaths in its military campaign in Gaza.

The letter was publicly leaked on Tuesday morning, a day after Ms. Harris said in a social media post that Israel must do more to allow aid into Gaza. Ms. Harris campaigned on Tuesday in Michigan, a crucial battleground state with a large population of Muslim and Arab American voters, many of whom are furious at how the Biden-Harris administration has handled Israel’s offensive in Gaza. She is scheduled to return to Michigan to campaign on Thursday and Friday.

It is unclear how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will respond. But by falling after the U.S. presidential election, the letter’s deadline could allow Mr. Netanyahu to wait until it is clear whether he will be dealing in January with Ms. Harris — or with Donald J. Trump.

U.S. and United Nations officials have warned in recent weeks that conditions are deteriorating further in Gaza, particularly in the territory’s north, as Israel’s military has focused operations against what it calls Hamas holdouts in the area.

“What we have seen over the past few months is that the level of humanitarian assistance has not been sustained” in Gaza, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, told reporters at a news briefing. “In fact, it has fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak.”

He added that Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin “thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make” to increase aid deliveries “from the very, very low levels” of the current moment. Aid shipments into Gaza in September reached their lowest level at any time since the Hamas-led attacks in Israel a little over a year ago, he said.

Mr. Miller would not specify the possible consequences if Israel did not comply, although a copy of the letter, which was posted online by the Axios reporter Barak Ravid and which U.S. officials said was authentic, clearly raised the possibility of suspending military aid. It invoked a U.S. law that bars military assistance to any country found to be blocking the delivery of U.S.-provided humanitarian aid.

Mr. Miller appeared to allude to that possibility, saying: “It’s just a plain reading of U.S. law. We are required to conduct assessments and find that recipients of U.S. military assistance do not arbitrarily deny or impede the provisioning of us humanitarian assistance. That’s just the law, and we of course will follow the law.”

The U.S. warning that military aid to Israel could be in jeopardy comes as the Biden administration says it is sending an advanced air defense system to help the country defend itself from missile attacks by Iran. Israel is preparing to strike the country in response to an Iranian barrage on its territory on Oct. 1.

After nearly a year of firm warnings to Israel about conditions in Gaza that have not produced significant penalties, many experts were skeptical that the new U.S. admonition would have a different result.

“The Israelis will do enough to appear to be improving the humanitarian conditions, and the administration will play along regardless of how serious that effort is,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It strains the bounds of credulity to the breaking point to believe that the administration would act to restrict U.S. military aid to Israel as the Iran-Israel crisis heats up,” he said.

But Biden administration officials say their concern about conditions in Gaza has risen rapidly in recent weeks.

“We are now writing to underscore the U.S. government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” the letter from Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin states.

The letter set several specific benchmarks for Israel to meet, including the passage of at least 350 aid trucks per day into Gaza and “instituting adequate humanitarian pauses” in military operations to allow for aid delivery and vaccinations “for at least the next four months.”

All of those are more specific requirements than Ms. Harris has publicly laid out, as she tries to navigate between the progressive wing of her party, which has called for an end to weapons shipments, and traditional support for Israel.

The letter includes no reference to the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that led to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Instead, it opens with a reminder of commitments Israel made to Mr. Blinken in April, which resulted in a temporary increase in aid deliveries into Gaza.

U.S. officials are particularly concerned about northern Gaza, where about 400,000 Palestinians remain. Israel has ordered their evacuation, warning that they are at high risk from fighting in the area. The letter called on Israel to end the “isolation” of northern Gaza, including by reaffirming “that there will be no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza.”

The letter also insists that Israel allow people in a humanitarian zone in Al-Mawasi, on Gaza’s coast, be allowed to move inland before the onset of winter.

John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, told reporters in a separate briefing that the letter reflects “a deep sense of urgency” within the Biden administration about the situation.

One sign of the concern came in the form of Ms. Harris’s social media post.

“The UN reports that no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly 2 weeks,” Ms. Harris wrote on her official government account. “Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.”

Clearly mindful of the effect that U.S. policy is having on her electoral prospects, Ms. Harris met with local Muslim and Arab American leaders during a campaign stop in Michigan earlier this month.

The 30-day deadline set by the letter would fall after the election, potentially making it politically easier for Mr. Biden to take stronger action against Israel than he has so far been willing to.

Mr. Miller, the State Department spokesman, said that the 30-day period would provide Israel with “an appropriate” amount of time to implement changes to its aid delivery, rather than demanding that “this has to happen overnight.”

Mr. Blinken sent a similar letter to Mr. Gallant in April, which Mr. Miller credited with prompting Israel to increase its aid deliveries into Gaza. After that letter, Mr. Miller said, as many as 300 to 400 aid trucks were entering Gaza on some days — a number U.S. officials consider adequate. But, he added, Mr. Blinken also made clear at that time “that the increase couldn’t be a one-off, that it needed to be sustained.”

He added that the letter was intended to be a private diplomatic correspondence, but that the United States was confirming its existence after it was leaked to the news media.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

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