Amed Khan writes in The Intercept:
I have organized airlifts of women legislators, judges, and journalists out of Afghanistan as Kabul fell; delivered ongoing aid to Ukrainian front-line villages during Russia’s invasion; worked on efforts to build runways, roads, and highways to deliver aid to Rwandan refugees after the genocide; and delivered aid shipments to enclaves besieged and under attack by the Syrian army.
None of it prepared me for the challenges of trying to bring a few trucks of food and medicine per week into the Gaza Strip.
It’s easy to point the finger at Israel, the country that is implementing the blockade of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, half of whom are children. Yet trying to work the issue from every angle on a daily basis to get urgent medical and food aid in, I’ve come to the conclusion that President Joe Biden, for whom I hosted fundraisers and worked to elect in 2020, has signed on to Israel’s end goal of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. (1) [my emphasis]
Amos Harel reports:
In response to the growing anger in the [Biden] administration, Israel committed 10 days ago to help inundate the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid. This promise is not yet being fulfilled on the ground. Israel is not interfering with airdrops of American aid or with the building of a dock on the Gaza City shoreline, but so far there have been no reports of an agreement on the movement of goods from Israel to northern Gaza through the Erez border crossing.
Aid shipments are arriving at a rate that is not meeting the demand in Gaza, and they are not providing an effective means of contending with the gravity of the situation there, following five and a half months of war. International agencies are publishing daily warnings of an impending spread of starvation among the Palestinian population, most of which has had to flee southward, toward Rafah.
The situation in the northern Gaza Strip is even more serious, since there the IDF destroyed most buildings and civilian infrastructure during the fighting, and much of the aid headed to the north is plundered on its way from the southern part of the Gaza Strip. (2) [my emphasis]
Whatever the Administration’s intention - and I’m being too generous in implying that the intention was anything other than running cover for what Netanyahu’s government in Israel is doing to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip - the reality is an ugly disaster.
Netanyahu’s approach to controlling Palestinians in the occupied territories has been to have small wars every few years. And that was sustainable for a couple of decades. One huge advantage of that for Israel’s famous hasbara (3) (propaganda) efforts was that in a short war, false cover stories for atrocities and war crimes don’t get the kind of scrutiny from the American and European publics that they have in this current war, now in its sixth month and no end in sight. Israel bombed a hospital because there are “terrorists” there? Israel is the most scrupulous army in the world in protecting civilians? In a two- or four-week war, you don’t have the sustained scrutiny that the current one is receiving.
In a six-month war, which Netanyahu clearly intends to be a much longer one (4), a war that already involves to some extent Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the Red Sea, the cynicism of the hasbara claims becomes much more obvious.
And the brutality is set to get much worse, as long as the current government proceeds on its current course. Yossi Verter reports:
In January 2024, Rafah had become the main point of contention in talks between Jerusalem, Cairo, Washington and the West. National interest and common sense should have led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his staff to formulate a clear plan for how to deal with the last remaining part of Gaza that the IDF had not yet reached, and to present it behind closed doors, in English, and provide assurances to ease the troubled minds of our allies.
There is no such plan that doesn't involve moving the great majority of Gazan refugees northward, the same refugees now occupying a nightmarish 64 square kilometer area in the south. The Israel Defense Forces have prepared a plan. It is not complicated. The number of noncombatants who will be killed will by no means be small. Moving so many civilians for the purpose of fighting the four Hamas battalions occupying the Rafah area will be more difficult than having civilians move southward at the start of the war. (5) [my emphasis]
Verter has a blunt assessment of Israel’s current postion in the world:
Netanyahu's Israel is becoming a lonely, isolated country on the brink of a sweeping arms embargo in the West, as if it were a violent African dictatorship. Its rating is declining every which way – its sovereign credit and its political credit. Our top-tier "liberal democracy" rating was bumped down to "electoral democracy" as a result of the attempted coup d'état by this horrendous coalition and its dangerous leader. Now we are a little less of a democracy, faltering in a difficult war under a personality-less, insolvent leadership that is unworthy of its people. [my emphasis]Gideon Levy, who has been relentlessly critical of Israel’s occupation policies for a long time, presents a grim picture of Israel’s strategic position thanks to the fanaticism of Netanyahu and the rest of the Israeli hard right:
These 150 days have been cruel and difficult and have done nothing to benefit Israel and will do nothing for it, neither in the short nor long term. On the contrary, Hamas has come out stronger. Thousands of its fighters have been killed, but it has become the hero of the Arab world. Still, most Israelis want at least 150 days more of the same; there has been zero public opposition to the war, even after five months of death and destruction on an unprecedented scale, after Israel has become an outcast, hated across the world, bloodied and economically damaged.
There isn't one area in which the country is better off after these dark last few months – the darkest in its history. Israel is now a lot less safe than it was before the war, it faces the risk of a regional escalation, global sanctions and the loss of American support. It is also a lot less democratic – the harm wreaked by the war on Israel's democratic institutions is greater even than that of the judicial coup – and the damages piling up will remain after the IDF withdraws from Gaza. (6)
Here is an interview with Levy from back in January (7):
Any food that gets to starving civilians is a good thing. But it’s hard to see how the Biden Administration’s current air drops of food and the “floating pier” that will take weeks to build are much more than PR, at least at this point. (8)
Notes:
(1) Khan, Amed (2024): Organizing Aid to Gaza Led Me to a Harsh Truth: Biden Is on Board for Ethnic Cleansing. The Intercept 03/23/2024. <https://theintercept.com/2024/03/23/biden-israel-gaza-aid-ethnic-cleansing/> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(2) Harel, Amos (2024): The U.S. Is Changing Its Approach to Israel, Which Continues to Ignore Its Warnings. Haaretz 03/24/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-24/ty-article/.premium/the-u-s-is-changing-its-approach-with-israel-which-continues-to-ignore-its-warnings/0000018e-6d1b-dfa8-a98e-6f1b2db70000> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(3) Sheizaf, Noam (2011): Hasbara: Why does the world fail to understand us? +972 Magazine 11/13/2011. https://www.972mag.com/hasbara-why-does-the-world-fail-to-understand-us/> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(4) Eichner, Itamar (2024): Netanyahu tells Blinken Rafah assault to proceed with or without US support. Ynet News 03/22/2024. <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1lbvzjra> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(5) Verter, Yossi (2024): The World Frets Over Netanyahu's Plans but Misses the Point: Rafah Is Just Part of His Campaign. Haaretz 03/22/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-22/ty-article/.premium/the-world-frets-over-netanyahus-plans-but-misses-the-point-rafah-is-part-of-his-campaign/0000018e-62a2-d541-a78e-ffeb99370000> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(6) Levy, Gideon (2024): After 150 Days of Death and Destruction in Gaza, Israel Is Neither Stronger nor Safer. Haaretz 03/07/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-03-07/ty-article-opinion/.premium/after-150-days-of-death-and-destruction-in-gaza-israel-is-neither-stronger-nor-safer/0000018e-14d7-d7d3-abce-74ff8b640000> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(7) Gideon Levy on How Israel's Press Is Failing to Cover the War's True Toll. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 01/17/2024. <https://youtu.be/-1GxgrJEuSs?si=BcY1PhweiJuOsTkV> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
(8) Badawi, Samer (2024): ‘Armchair humanitarianism’: The problem with Gaza’s maritime aid corridor. +972 Magazine 11/13/2011. <https://www.972mag.com/gaza-maritime-corridor-starvation-blockade/> (Accessed: 2024-24-03).
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