From Jerusalem’s perspective, Israel already has complied with the administration’s newest demands.
From Jerusalem’s perspective, Israel already has complied with the administration’s newest demands.
T he Biden administration is once again threatening to hold its support for Israel’s defensive operations against Iran’s terrorist proxies hostage unless certain conditions are met. This is quite a conundrum for Israel. It would surely like to comply with the administration’s demands, but, from Jerusalem’s perspective, it already has.
In an October 13 letter to the Israeli government undersigned by administration officials Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, the United States accused the Jewish state of cutting off humanitarian aid to parts of the Gaza Strip. Israeli actions have “contributed to starvation and widespread suffering, particularly in the enclave’s north where Israel launched a renewed ground operation nearly two weeks ago,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Israel must “reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory” within 30 days of the letter, it read, or there will be “implications” for the future disbursement of U.S. ordnance and financial aid.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller cast the missive not as an ultimatum but a friendly nudge of the sort that Israel has responded to with alacrity in the past. “We have seen Israel make changes before, and when they make changes, humanitarian assistance can increase,” he told reporters. “We know it can be done, we know that the various logistical, bureaucratic obstacles can be surmounted,” he added.
They surely can, although probably not immediately in the areas of the Strip where the Israel Defense Forces are conducting renewed counterinsurgency operations. But the United Nations maintains that Israeli defensive operations in the Gaza Strip are incompatible with the preservation of civilian humanitarian conditions. One or the other will have to suffer.
According to the U.N.’s World Food Programme, food aid entering Gaza’s northern enclaves cratered in October as the IDF encircled a position near Jabalia where Hamas operatives were reportedly attempting to regroup. The civilian population there — some 400,000 civilians, according to estimates — is under increasing pressure to move southward away from the fighting. “Hunger remains rampant, and the threat of famine persists,” the U.N. organization told CNN. “If the flow of assistance does not resume, one million vulnerable people will be deprived on this lifeline.”
The Israelis seem perplexed by the veiled accusation that they are deliberately engineering a famine in this extremely localized part of the Gaza Strip. “Israel has not halted the entry or coordination of humanitarian aid” said the military outfit responsible for the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza. What’s more, other U.N. organizations do not report a catastrophic disruption of their food aid distribution networks. “Despite the challenges,” the Times of Israel reports, citing a statement from U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq, “the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and its partners are distributing bread, meals and flour to designated shelters and beyond.”
Neither Israeli officials nor U.N. representatives dispute the claim that aid deliveries have been truncated as a result of the fighting, and it’s in neither party’s interests to see U.N. representatives caught in the middle of those combat operations (at least, those U.N. representatives who aren’t on Hamas’s payroll). What is in dispute is the relative risk of hunger in those areas. Caution is warranted. The U.N.’s relative ability to recognize the prospect of famine is a matter of debate. After all, it was only four months ago that the U.N.’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) was rebuked by its own Famine Review Committee, “which found that previous famine projections were not plausible due to incorrect assumptions, misinterpretation of data, and a significant omission of food entering Gaza through commercial and private sectors,” a Hayom report read.
The mischaracterization of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza of which the IPC initially warned made international headlines and yielded to widespread outrage over Israel’s handling of the war that began on October 7, 2023. The clarification that revealed the extent to which the whole affair was made up didn’t receive nearly the same level of coverage. And, if Israeli denials are any indication, the same sequence of events appears to be unfolding all over again. Certainly, this time could be different, but there is no greater indicator of future results than past performance.
Regardless, the pressure is once again on Israel. But the Biden administration has imposed an impossible conundrum on Jerusalem. If Israel has just 30 days to wrap up new counterinsurgency operations in the Gaza Strip’s northern territories, it would have to do so with unnecessary disregard for the lives of both the IDF and Gaza’s civilians. Speedy military operations in densely populated urban areas are also bloody operations, and the Biden administration would surely react with just as much horror to that outcome as it has to the tactics Israel is presently employing. But a more methodical approach designed to preserve as much life as possible may extend beyond Washington’s arbitrary timeline. What’s more, the circumstances that are contributing to Washington’s apprehension may be yet another product of an imperfect information environment and the selective interpretation of facts on the ground by Israel’s monomaniacal critics in the U.N. What a predicament.
Indeed, imposing this predicament on Israel seems to suit the Biden administration’s political objectives, even if America’s strategic goals in the region are frustrated in the process. The elusive fact of famine in the Gaza Strip seems immaterial. Rather, the impression that the threat of a humanitarian catastrophe looms forever just over the horizon appears to be an impression the administration wants to cultivate. If the Biden administration hopes to see its Israeli partners emerge from a speedy war against Hamas victorious, it’s doing everything in its power to thwart that objective by impugning its ally’s actions and motives while depriving Jerusalem of the tools it needs to see this war through to a rapid conclusion.
If you’re confused, so is the Biden administration. When it comes to Israel’s post-10/7 defensive operations, this White House doesn’t know its own mind. It may be incumbent on voters to make it up for them.