The Biden-Harris administration confirmed on Tuesday that Israel has 30 days to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip or risk losing access to U.S. weapons funding.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli officials on October 13 outlining their concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and demanding that Israel take steps to increase the flow of aid. The letter came after a fatal Israeli strike on a hospital tent complex in central Gaza that Israel identified as a Hamas command center.
The letter, a copy of which was posted online by an Axios reporter, demands Israel increase the level of daily aid to 350 trucks, implement additional humanitarian pauses in fighting, and offer increased security for designated humanitarian zones. It assigns further blame to the “onerous liability and customs requirements” implemented by Israel along with new vetting procedures.
“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government, including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding 90 percent of humanitarian movements” and other restrictions have kept aid from flowing, Blinken and Austin wrote in the letter.
Israel has 30 days to “reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory,” the pair wrote, or else it “may have implications” for future weapons transfers and funding under the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the U.S. from providing aid to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the veracity of the letter, claiming it was a private correspondence that the U.S. was not planning to reveal publicly.
“The letter was not meant as a threat,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “The letter was simply meant to reiterate the sense of urgency we feel and the seriousness with which we feel it, about the need for an increase, a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance.”
A senior defense official claims the letter is like one sent by Blinken in April that sought “concrete measures from the Israelis.”
This appears to be the most severe rhetorical escalation since President Biden threatened to withhold certain shipments of American weapons to Israel if Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to carry out his invasion of Rafah in May, the lone remaining Hamas stronghold.
In a phone call with the Israeli leader last week, Biden emphasized “the imperative to restore access to the north, including by reinvigorating the corridor from Jordan immediately,” per the Washington Post.
COGAT, the Israeli body responsible for aid distribution throughout the Gaza Strip, rejects the notion that the country is impeding aid. “Israel has not halted the entry or coordination of humanitarian aid,” it announced Wednesday.
The United Nations has remained a prominent critic of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, with a UN investigator accusing the Jewish state of pursuing a “starvation campaign” in early September.
“It is unfortunately UNRWA and others, and the World Food Program is another one, who simply spend their time perpetuating this conflict rather than pulling their finger out and actually doing the job which they were designed to do,” Israeli prime minister’s office spokesman David Mencer said in July. “Stop blaming Israel.”