Introducing Israel's New Minister of Humanitarian Aid in Gaza: Far-right Bezalel Smotrich - Israel News - Haaretz.com
"Do you believe that Israel is doing everything it can to allow sufficient aid into Gaza?" U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked that question at his daily briefing last Wednesday. His answer was lengthy and enlightening.
"I think we have seen for some time various obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian assistance," he said. "Sometimes those have been bureaucratic obstacles where one arm of the Israeli government or of the security services isn't talking to another arm, and we've tried to work through those.
"At times, we've seen security hurdles that we don't agree with, so provisions that Israel puts in place that are supposedly to improve security inside Gaza that we actually don't think will have that effect and that we think are counterproductive. And we engage with them to try and get those measures reversed or, in some cases, modified.
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"Sometimes Israel has very real concerns about smuggling, or they have concerns about diversion, and we work with them to try to make sure those concerns are addressed, but in a way that doesn't keep humanitarian assistance from coming out – or from coming in, I should say."
Nevertheless, he stressed in response to the many other questions about aid to Gazawith which he was bombarded, "I never want to make it sound like it is a game over, mission accomplished. It is very much not. It is an ongoing process. We were constantly having to break through new hurdles and find additional ways to get humanitarian assistance in ...
"The outcomes have not been sufficient. There are things that we're trying to improve all the time. But it is because of the United States' involvement that we have gotten humanitarian – that we got humanitarian assistance in in the first place...
"I will just make clear, Israel has an obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure that humanitarian assistance makes it to the people in Gaza ... It's not the United States telling them that; it's their obligation under international humanitarian law."
Khan Younis in southern Gaza, September.Credit: AFP/Mahmud Hams
But it's not just international law. American law also forbids arms sales to countries that prevent or restrict the entrance of American aid. Israel is well aware of the way preventing humanitarian aid would affect its ability to continue conducting the war as it wishes.
Nevertheless, Miller and the entire U.S. administration will apparently soon have grounds for much greater concern. Israel's government, especially far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir – with support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – are pushing to have the Israel Defense Forces take over the distribution of all aid to Gaza. According to a previous Haaretz report, the IDF would take responsibility for every stage of the process – purchasing the aid, transporting it, securing it and distributing it to Gaza's residents.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in May.Credit: Yonatan Zindel/Flash90
Under this plan – which Netanyahu convened a meeting about on Sunday evening – the IDF would buy products stored in warehouses near the Gazan border. They would then be sent through the Kerem Shalom border crossing and another crossing to distribution centers in Gaza on IDF trucks. Finally, the goods would be distributed to Gazans by IDF soldiers.
The IDF, Shin Bet security service and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant all oppose this plan on the well-founded grounds that it would put soldiers at risk and that instead of managing the war, the IDF would have to allocate troops to hand out food. But it seems unlikely that either the IDF or the defense minister will be able to hinder Smotrich from realizing his dream.
The plan's estimated cost – $5.4 billion per year for food alone – should also have led to it being shelved by Smotrich, who ostensibly serves as finance minister.
But beyond that, the real danger is that this plan would put Israel on a collision course with the U.S. administration in particular and the international community in general. And it's highly unlikely that it could even achieve its goal of ending Hamas' participation in the profitable aid industry.
Humanitarian aid truck entering Gaza via the Kerem Shalom Crossing in southern Israel, in May.Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz
If the IDF were in charge of disseminating humanitarian aid, the agency that would actually oversee and coordinate the process is the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit – which has effectively become an extension of Smotrich in his second hat as a minister in the Defense Ministry. And even in better days, long before the war began, COGAT wasn't afflicted with excessive generosity with regard to humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Its "red lines" document from 2008, which the media was allowed to report on only years later on orders from the Supreme Court, is still fondly remembered. This "scientific" document calculated the number of calories a person needs to avoid starving (2,279 per day). Based on this data, it calculated the amounts and types of food that would be allowed to enter Gaza.
It then proceeded to calculate the number of trucks that would be allowed in to carry out this mission. The figure came to precisely 170.4 trucks five days a week, excluding the 68.8 truckloads that were equivalent back then to Gaza's own food production, which today is virtually nonexistent.
There's no reason to think the menu of calories drafted in 2008 would change under the brink-of-starvation regimen Smotrich would institute in Gaza. He would also undoubtedly consult his political partner Ben-Gvir, who, in his capacity as national security minister, has experience constructing menus for prisoners convicted or suspected of terrorism.
As commander in chief of the food project, Smotrich would also set the timetables for the trucks' entry. And whenever it was necessary – which he would determine, there being nobody who would stand in his way – he would also decide on effective punitive measures, such as preventing the trucks from entering, or not distributing food in neighborhoods where Hamas fighters continued to shoot at IDF soldiers. Or he might simply do so as a way to "educate" the population.
The sanctions the U.S. administration would impose on him seem unlikely to sway him. But such sanctions presumably wouldn't be limited to personal restrictions on Smotrich. The entire government and all Israelis would pay their price.
IDF troops operate in Gaza, December.Credit: Israel Defense Forces/ REUTERS
IDF soldiers would have to escort every truck entering an insecure combat zone. And we're not talking about two or three guards. A convoy of trucks would require dozens of soldiers to guard it every day, including armored personnel carriers and even tanks, along with air support to spot militants and other dangers along the way.
Another sizable force would have to permanently guard the warehouses in Gaza where the aid would be stored. And additional sizable forces would have to distribute the aid at dozens – if not hundreds – of distribution points scattered around Gaza, all while likely clashing with mobs of starving Gazans. Most of them would be women and children, who would come with their baskets and crates to get their daily or weekly food ration.
Somebody – that is, IDF soldiers – would also obviously have to keep detailed records to prevent people who have already gotten their daily ration from getting duplicate or triplicate handouts, lest the surplus be given to Hamas.
The possible avenues for friction and danger this system would create are endless. And nobody should envy the officers who would have to inform bereaved families that their son fell while fulfilling his duty to distribute food to Gaza's residents or guard the truck that brought cans of tuna to Jabalya.
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, September.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/ REUTERS
Moreover, humanitarian aid isn't just food and water. Thousands of patients aren't getting appropriate medical treatment, and since May, when Egypt closed its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, they have been almost hermetically trapped in the enclave as the supply of drugs and medical equipment runs out.
Today, Gaza still enjoys a limited, irregular flow of medical aid from Arab and Western countries, though most hospitals have been destroyed and community clinics suffer from an enormous shortage of professional staff. To date, nongovernmental organizations have distributed this medical aid to those doctors and clinics that are still working. But if Israel assumed full responsibility for maintaining Gaza's medical infrastructure, it would be the one that had to fund the drugs, the treatments, and the doctors' salaries.
To prevent Hamas from seizing control of the medicine supply, Israel would also have to set up a system to distribute and guard drugs and medical equipment, just as it would for food. This would mean more soldiers and more money from the state's coffers, because it's unlikely that any country or institution would agree to donate money to instruments of the occupation, even to fund humanitarian aid.
A full, direct occupation is a luxury that only wealthy countries can afford. But even they have recognized the need to set up mechanisms for local administration that would bear the burden of day-to-day maintenance of the system.
Israel has no such mechanisms in Gaza, and it refuses to allow the Palestinian Authority to return to the Strip. The dream of setting up a military government that would replicate the "worthwhile occupation" in the West Bank can't be achieved in devastated Gaza without repairing its economic infrastructure – rebuilding hundreds of factories and restarting production, exports, and employment that could produce taxes for the occupying power.
Yet none of the above is included in the plan, aside from Smotrich's appointment as Gaza's minister of food.