In late February, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyeus said the agency's visit to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern Gaza found "severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed." A senior aid official said nearly three weeks ago that a fourth of Gaza’s 2.4 million population were at risk of famine. Adele Khodr, regional director of the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, said: "The child deaths we feared are here, as malnutrition ravages the Gaza Strip. These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable."
Last week, the U.N. warned that famine in Gaza was "almost inevitable," with a senior aid official saying that at least 576,000 people across the Gaza Strip—one-quarter of the population—faced catastrophic levels of food insecurity. It also said one in six children under the age of 2 in the north were suffering from acute malnutrition. According to the Gaza health ministry run by Hamas, more than 31,180 Palestinians have died in Israel’s military campaign that began after Hamas led a slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, abducting hundreds of hostages, scores of whom are still being held.
Both Jordan and the U.S. have airdropped food in Gaza. Open Arms, an aid ship organized by the World Central Kitchen founded by Chef José Andrés is carrying 200 metric tons of food to Gaza from Cyprus as part of Operation Safeena (which means “boat” in Arabic). Welcome as it is, however, those 200 tons can only provide one day’s meal for half a million residents. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday said this was the first time a ship had been authorized to deliver aid directly to Gaza since 2005, adding that the E.U. would work with “smaller ships” until the U.S. military completes work on its floating port off the Gazan coast. Completion of that project is expected to take 60 daysf, clearly too long for Gaza residents already on the brink.
France 24 reported that Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Tuesday that ships are “not a substitute for the overland transport of food and other emergency aid into Gaza and particularly northern Gaza. It cannot make up for that.”
Citing Vice President Kamala Harris’ March 3 statement that human beings in Gaza have been reduced to eating animal feed as children there starve, eight Democratic U.S. senators
sent a letter to President Joe Biden Monday calling on him to halt aid military aid to Israel because of that government’s blocking of aid deliveries to the strip. In part, the letter states:
Your Administration has repeatedly stated, and the United Nations and numerous aid organizations have confirmed, that Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian access, both at the borderand within Gaza, are one of the primary causes of this humanitarian catastrophe.
The Netanyahu government’s interference in U.S. humanitarian operations violates the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act — Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 USC2378-1). The law is clear: “No assistance shall be furnished under this chapter or the Arms Export Control Act to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
According to public reporting and your own statements, the Netanyahu government is in violation of this law. Given this reality, we urge you to make it clear to the Netanyahu government that failure to immediately and dramatically expand humanitarian access and facilitate safe aid deliveries throughout Gaza will lead to serious consequences, as specified under existing U.S. law. People are starving. As you have said, “We’re going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need. No excuses. Because the truth is, aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough.”
The Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act states: “No assistance shall be furnished under this chapter or the Arms Export Control Act to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
While Israeli authorities have asserted they are not blocking aid, critics, including those on the ground in Gaza say this not to be the case. In January two of the signatory senators—Chris van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon—visited the Rafah area in southern Gaza where 1.4 million internally displaced Palestinians have fled and now await an attack that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed will take place. What they found were hundreds of aid trucks lined up for inspection by Israel Defense Forces. Most weren’t being allowed into Gaza. Since then, while the siege continues, reports from various NGOs still working in Gaza have confirmed that what the senators saw is still going on.
Isaac Chotiner at The New Yorker interviewed Hollen earlier this month. Here’s an excerpt:
Why do you believe the Netanyahu government is responsible for the lack of aid reaching civilians in Gaza?
Well, I think it’s clear from following the situation that the Netanyahu government could allow many more trucks to cross into Gaza, both through Kerem Shalom and through Rafah. If you look at any graph over time of the number of trucks going through, you can see big drops to under a hundred trucks as recently as February, and at the same time, you have people like [Minister of Finance] Bezalel Smotrich holding up flour at the Port of Ashdod for at least five weeks, despite the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu promised President Biden that that flour would go to hungry, starving people. That’s just one example. You also have [Minister of National Security] Itamar Ben-Gvir indicating that he would not allow police to clear protesters who were blocking trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing.
These are Israeli protesters intentionally trying to block aid trucks from crossing into Gaza, correct?
Right. There’s also the issue of continued arbitrary denial of things like maternity kits from being able to cross into Gaza on the claim that somehow a maternity kit is a dual-use item, and that also holds true with other items like water purifiers and things that clearly are not dual use. [Dual-use items are items which could potentially be used for military purposes, aside from their intended purposes.] When there’s one of those items on the truck, the whole truck has to be turned around and go back to the start, which is now taking up to several weeks in some cases.
You mentioned that you could fill us in more about the issue with Smotrich. What was it you were going to say?
So, this was a shipment of flour from Turkey that was at the port of Ashdod, and had enough flour to feed hundreds of thousands of people for weeks. Smotrich intervened and refused to allow the flour to be transferred because he didn’t want the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to be able to distribute it, even though we know that UNRWA has been the primary distribution system for aid in Gaza. I should point out that Ambassador David Satterfield, our humanitarian envoy, has said repeatedly that he has received zero evidence from the Netanyahu government that U.N.-distributed aid has been diverted to Hamas. But Smotrich was holding this up, claiming that he didn’t want it to go through UNRWA, and so the flour has to be transferred to the World Food Program, but before it could be released to the World Food Program, UNRWA had to pay delay charges for the time that it was sitting in the port of Ashdod because Smotrich had not allowed it to be delivered, and when UNRWA went to make that payment, it was rejected by the Israeli bank that refused to accept a payment from UNRWA,
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, long a strong backer of Israel, said in a speech Thursday that new elections should be called in Israel:
“I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,” said Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States. “However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”
Mr. Schumer added: “He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”
In a tweet on X, Patrick Gaspard, who served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa under President Barack Obama, said Schumer’s speech marked a "major shift that should lead to immediate review of unconditional weapons support that pours from U.S. to Netanyahu government every 36 hours." The U.S. provides $3.8 billion in arms to Israel each year.
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The other six signatories of the letter: Ben Lujan of New Mexico, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch of Vermont, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Mazie K. Hirono of Hawai’i.
