Blinken and Austin Scold Netanyahu over Gaza Atrocities, playing Cynical Presidential Politics
Juan Cole 10/16/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Barak Ravid at Axios got the scoop. He was leaked a letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accusing them of reneging on undertakings of last April to pursue their war on Hamas in a manner consistent with the protection of innocent civilians as required by US law and by International Humanitarian Law. The two American leaders only obliquely referred to IHL, of course, since the U.S. only approves of international law when it can be used against enemies such as Vladimir Putin.
The letter is a frank admission that the extremist Israeli government now in power has been endangering civilian lives in a manner inconsistent with the Leahy Act, which requires the State Department to certify that US weaponry sold to other countries is used in a manner that, to the extent possible in war, preserves the lives of innocent civilians. ProPublica revealed in late September that US AID had concluded that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. This finding should have provoked a cut-off of US arms to Israel under the provisions of the Leahy Act. Blinken, however, buried the conclusions and lied about them to Congress so that he could keep the arms pipeline to Israel going.
Ironically, Blinken uses language similar to that of US AID in this week’s letter, and holds these Israeli harms to civilians over Netanyahu’s head, threatening a weapons cut-off if the Israelis don’t stop starving Palestinians and impeding medical and other humanitarian aid.
The obvious question is if Blinken has known about these violations of US law all along, why is he only detailing them in public (his office surely leaked the letter to Ravid) now? And why, if Israel is in violation of the Leahy Act, weren’t weapons supplies cut off way before now? Why given the Israelis another 30 days to commit further atrocities?
The obvious conclusion is that the letter is an intervention in the presidential race, with Election Day only 20 days away as I write.
The letter seems calculated to help Kamala Harris, who takes a lot of flack for her association with Biden’s de facto complicity in genocide from the left and from minority voters, including but not limited to Muslim and Arab American voters. The enthusiasm gap for Harris as a result of the Democratic Party’s complicity with Netanyahu’s atrocities, it is alleged by some observers, could cost her the key swing state of Michigan. Michigan has sizeable Arab and Muslim American communities, but they aren’t the only ones with concerns. Only 17% of Black voters in a recent pollsaw Harris’s Gaza policy as a reason to vote for her.
So, for prominent cabinet members of the Biden-Harris administration to lash Netanyahu on treatment of civilians might be good for her.
On the other hand, Biden and Harris have to be careful not to lose the campaign donations and votes of the Jewish community, some two thirds of whom in polling say Israel is important to them. Only a third of American Jews in a recent Pew Research Center poll thought Israel was going too far in Gaza, and 24% say it hasn’t gone far enough.
But a mere letter with a threat that won’t even be implemented for 30 days — and of course will actually never be implemented — might not make enough Jewish Americans angry enough to affect the election.
I am only speculating here. But the letter may also be a warning to Netanyahu that once the election is over, Biden will still be president and Harris may well be his successor, and he should stop trying to get Trump elected. Netanyahu has many reasons for bruiting an ethnic cleansing and starvation campaign in northern Gaza and for invading Lebanon and for bombing Iran. But surely these actions are dual use, and he is aware that they make it look as though Biden is not a strong leader in control of events. That is an implicit argument for Trump.
Blinken and Austin demand some pretty robust measures by Netanyahu. No food aid has gotten into northern Gaza in October, and September saw the fewest aid trucks allowed to enter this year. They want 350 food and aid trucks to be allowed into Goza from five checkpoints (and demand that the fifth checkpoint, now closed, be opened right back up).
Before the war, 500 food trucks went into Gaza daily from Israel. Even 350 is far less than what is needed. Because of Israel’s long economic blockade of Gaza, it was a basket case even before the current war. Netanyahu kept people there just on the verge of hunger, limiting calories, but avoiding starvation. He has more recently apparently decided that starvation is a legitimate tool of war. It isn’t.
They even want Netanyahu to let aid organizations repair roads and restore some infrastructure that he has carefully reduced to rubble. They want an end to the current attempt to isolate (read starve) northern Gaza. They want more medical supplies allowed in. The Israelis exclude medical scissors and scalpels on the specious grounds that Hamas might stab someone with them. Operations have to be done without anesthesia or proper knives.
I have given the full text in HTML below, so you can read the letter for yourself.
Sadly, its provisions aren’t likely to be implemented, or only slightly, and Biden will go on bear-hugging Netanyahu right until he vacates the White House in January.
And Palestinian civilians, who don’t exist according to Israel’s president, will go on dying at astonishing rates.
“The Woodhouse,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024.
The full text is here (I typed the first couple of pages but then used iPhone’s camera to perform OCR on the last two pages):
(To Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Gallant):
Secretary Blinken’s April 19 letter to Minister Gallant noted that — in accordance with U.S. law and policy, including National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) — the Departments of State and Defense must continually assess your government’s adherence to your March 2024 assurances that Israel would “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and U.S. government supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance” to and within Gaza. The Department of State will need to conduct a similar assessment under section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act in order to provide additional Foreign Military Financing assistance to Israel. We are now writing to underscore the U.S. government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse its trajectory.
The humanitarian situation for over two million civilians in Gaza is increasingly dire. Despite the July transcription from combat operations to Special Counterterrorism Operations in the Gaza Strip, multiple evacuation orders have forced 1.7 million people into a narrow coastal zone from Muwasi to Deir al Balah. Extreme overcrowding has put these civilians at high risk of lethal contagion. Humanitarian implementers report that they are unable to meet essential survival needs of aid-dependent civilians. Trucks carrying humanitarian commodities, including perishable goods funded by the United States, are delayed at crossing platforms. We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government — including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding nearly 90 percent of humanitarian movements between northern and southern Gaza in September, continuing burdensome and excessive dual-use restrictions, and instituting new vetting and ornerous liability and customs requirements for humanitarian staff and shipments — together with increased lawlessness and looting — are contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza.
Since Israel’s assurances in March and the April letter — which produced important improvements in the provision of humanitarian assistance — the amount of aid delivered has dropped by more than 50 percent. The amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year.
Conversely, Israel recently demonstrated with the successful campaign to administer polio vaccines to more than 560,000 children in Gaz what is possible and necessary to ensure civilians in Gaza receive the assistance that they require and that Israel must facilitate.
To reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory and consistent with its assurances to us, Israel must, starting now and within 30 days, act on the following concrete measures. Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy under NSM-20 and relevant U.S. law.
1. Ahead of winter, surge all forms of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza by:
- *Enabling a minimum of 350 trucks per day to enter Gaza through upholding your prior commitment to allow assistance to enter Gaza consistently through all four major crossings (Erez West, Erez East, Gate 96, and Kerem Shalom), as well as opening a new fifth crossing.
*Instituting adequate humanitarian pauses across Gaza as necessary to enable humanitarian activities, including vaccinations, deliveries, and distribution, for at least the next four months.
*Allowing people in Muwasi and the humanitarian zone to move inland before winter.
*Enhancing security for fixed humanitarian sites and movements.
*Rescinding evacuation orders when there is no operational need,
*Facilitating rapid implementation of the World Food Program winter and logistics plan to repair roads, install warehousing, and expand platforms and staging areas.
* Ensuring Israell Coordination and Liaison (CLA) officers can communicate with humanitarian convoys at checkpoints and assign division-level liaison officers from Southern Command to the Joint Coordination Board,
*Removing restrictions on the use of container and closed trucks and
*Increasing the number of vetted drivers to 400.
*Removing an agreed list of essential items from the dual-use restricted list.
*Provide expedited clearance processing at the Port of Ashdod for Gaza-bound humanitarian assistance.
2. Ensure that the commercial and Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) corridors are functioning at full and continuous capacity by:
- *Waiving customs requitements on the JAF corridor until such time as the UN Is able to implement its own process.
*Allowing the JAF to enter the Gaza Strip through the northern crossings, and others as agreed.
* Reinstating a minimum of 50-100 commercial trucks per day.
3. End Isolation of northern Gaza by:
- Reaffirming that there will be no israeli government palicy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza.
Ensuring humanitarian organizations have continuous access to northern
Gaza through northern crossings and from southern Gaza.
Relatedly, we are deeply concerned about the potential adoption of Knesset legislation to remove certain privileges and immunities from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Its staff, prohibit official contact with UNRWA, and change the status quo regarding UNRWA In Jerusalem. While we share your concerns about the serious allegations of certain UNRWA employees participating in the October 7 terrorist attacks and of Hamas misusing UNRWA facilities, enactment of such restrictions would devastate the Gaza humanitarian response at this critical moment and deny vital educational and social services to tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which could have implications under relevant U.S. law and policy. We ask that you take all possible steps, whether with lawmakers of using the authorities of the Prime Minister’s Office, to ensure this does not come to pass We also urge you to provide UNRWA with additional information regarding these allegations, just as we continue to urge UNRWA to ensure it has a process in place to implement reforms to ensure confidence in the neutrality of UNRWA’s personnel.
The April letter underscored it is critical for Israel to continue to demonstrate its strong commitment to meeting its international law obligations related to the conduct of operations against Hamas, including by allowing international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to individuals detained in connection with this conflict and reinvigorating dialogue with the ICRC immediately. Reports. of abuses against detainees have only further elevated the importance uf Israel doing so, urgently.
Lastly, it is vitally important that our governments establish a new channel through which we can raise and discuss civilian harm incidents Our engagements to date have not produced the necessary outcomes. We ask that the initial virtual meeting of this channel be held by the end of October
We again ask for your urgent intervention and leadership to address this situation.
Antony J. Blinken
Secretary of State
Lloyd J. Austin
Secretary of Defense