In the early days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed off on a policy for Israeli forces to attack humanitarian convoys carrying much-needed aid for the millions of Palestinians trapped in Gaza, new reporting finds.
Drop Site News, citing reports from Israeli media, revealed in a report this week that the powerful Israeli Security Cabinet developed a plan regarding humanitarian aid amid the genocide, with the cabinet passing drafts of the policy back and forth with Blinken’s office.
Blinken himself was reportedly directly involved in these talks, which happened on October 16 and 17, as Gaza civil society was already collapsing due to Israel’s attacks on hospitals and total siege. Blinken and President Joe Biden held another round of meetings with the Israeli Security Cabinet the next day.
The policy, announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said that Israel would “thwart” any humanitarian aid supplies that “reach Hamas” — with Drop Site noting that Israeli forces use the Hebrew word for “thwart” to refer to killings and assassinations. That December, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Security Cabinet, told Israeli media clearly that “aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations would be bombed from the air, and the aid would be halted.”
As the policy was announced, Blinken boasted of an agreement between the U.S. and Israel to allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, while also claiming that the U.S. was supposedly concerned about humanitarian aid being taken by Hamas members. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel called the reports “absurd,” Drop Site reported.
Since then, Israel has relentlessly targeted humanitarian aid convoys, often accusing them of being affiliated with Hamas — which is the governing body in Gaza. Israel’s attacks on aid and near-total aid blockade have created famine across Gaza, while experts have warned that the aid blockade is killing tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. A wide range of humanitarian aid groups and experts have warned that Israel is using disease and famine as weapons of war.
Over the past year, Israeli forces have made Gaza the most dangerous place on earth for aid workers, killing roughly 300 aid workers in Gaza. More than 200 of these workers were with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which Israeli officials have unilaterally labeled as a Hamas-affiliated organization, without evidence.
However, Israel has also targeted other aid convoys, including ones coordinated by international groups like World Central Kitchen and Anera. Rights groups have documented many incidents in which Israeli forces have targeted sites where humanitarian aid workers were operating while knowing their exact coordinates. And Israel has also killed aid workers in Lebanon and the occupied West Bank, where Hamas is not in power.
Meanwhile, UNRWA has reported that Israel is denying aid group workers’ and leaders’ visas, with the seeming goal of “phasing out” humanitarian groups’ presence in Gaza.
The Drop Site report is the latest evidence of Blinken and the Biden administration approving, either explicitly or implicitly, of Israel’s policy of manufacturing famine by blocking humanitarian aid.
Late last month, ProPublica revealed that two top U.S. government offices on humanitarian assistance had found, this spring, that the U.S. should suspend some or all weapons shipments to Israel because Israeli forces were restricting the delivery of aid. But their recommendations were sidelined by Blinken, who went on to lie to Congress about the findings.
Their recommendations were two of many within the government and State Department calling for the U.S. to suspend weapons shipments to Israel, citing U.S. and international law, all of which have been effectively tossed out by top State Department officials.
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