Above photo: Al Jazeera.
As Israel moves forward with its plan to ethnically cleanse the north of Gaza, US officials have made public a letter that gives Israel 30 days to ‘improve the flow’ of humanitarian aid.
The US government’s special envoy for West Asian humanitarian issues, Lise Grande, told the heads of over a dozen aid organizations that Washington “would not consider withholding weapons from Israel for blocking food and medicine from entering [Gaza],” according to informed sources who spoke with POLITICO.
“She was sort of saying, with certain allies, we can’t play bad cop,” an aid official who attended the 29 August meeting said, adding that Grande made it clear Israel is part of a “tight circle of very few allies” that Washington “will not oppose, nor will it hold anything back that they want.”
POLITICO notes that the sources spoke on condition of anonymity in part “because they feared their organizations’ work might be further interrupted in Gaza.”
Grande reportedly told the aid officials that the US “could potentially consider other tactics to convince Israel to allow life-saving aid into Gaza” but stressed that the White House “would continue to support Israel and would not delay or stop weapons shipments.”
“She was saying that the rules don’t apply to Israel,” one person who attended the meeting said.
Grande’s comments came after the leaders of the aid organizations presented her with the many ways Israel has blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as part of their strategy to use starvation as a weapon of war.
The POLITICO report was published three days after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent a letter to top Israeli officials giving them 30 days “to ensure noncombatants have access to food and other necessities.”
“Absent a change … the administration would be obliged to take steps laid out in laws and policies linking the facilitation of humanitarian aid during wartime and the compliance with laws of war, including the protection of civilians, to the provision of US arms and military assistance,” the Washington Post says the letter cautioned.
Nevertheless, the missive has no explicit threat from the US of cutting military aid to their ally, with some analysts alleging that its purpose is to “shield” US officials from accusations of complicity in genocide.
When reporters on Monday pressed State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller as to why the “ultimatum” included a 30-day grace period, he replied, “We believe it’s appropriate to give them a chance to cure the problem.”
Austin and Blinken’s letter came on the heels of Israel implementing the so-called “General’s Plan” to ethnically cleanse the north of Gaza.
“We have to tell the residents of north Gaza that they have one week to evacuate the territory, which then becomes a military zone, [a zone] in which every figure is a target and, most importantly, no supplies enter this territory,” the plan’s mastermind, retired major general Giora Eiland, said in mid-September.
In November, Eiland said that the spread of disease in Gaza is good for Israel. “After all, severe epidemics in the southern strip will bring victory closer and reduce fatalities among IDF soldiers,” he wrote in an op-ed for Yedioth Ahronoth.