An aerial view showing massive destruction and displacement in Gaza City on July 30, 2025. (Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post) |
In February 2024, U.S. diplomats drafted a grim warning for then-President Joe Biden and his top national security officials. The Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, triggered a few months before by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by militant group Hamas, was so devastating and destructive that northern Gaza had turned into an “apocalyptic wasteland” with “catastrophic human needs.” Food, clean drinking water and medicine were already scarce as Israeli bombardments flattened sections of the embattled territory. The cable, compiled by USAID officials with connections to United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations, cited eyewitness accounts of scattered human remains and dead bodies left to rot in the broken streets. The details of this particular cable were reported this past week by Reuters. It was one of five such missives sent in early 2024, charting the rapidly deteriorating state of the humanitarian situation in Gaza. According to Reuters, the cable warning of a “wasteland” was suppressed by then-U.S. ambassador Jack Lew and his deputy, “because they believed it lacked balance.” The cables did not reach top officials in the Biden White House responsible for crafting U.S. policy regarding Gaza at the time, according to the news agency. The incident illustrates the tensions within the Biden administration over its support of the Israeli war effort against Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people in its attack on southern Israel and abducted hundreds of hostages. Numerous U.S. diplomats, including former USAID staffers, were frustrated by what they saw as Biden’s acquiescence to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and unwillingness to condition U.S. aid to Israel along its compliance with international humanitarian law. Nevertheless, Netanyahu and his allies still raged against Biden over a few statements of consternation and a brief symbolic pause to a tiny portion of U.S. military assistance to Israel, which flowed largely unimpeded. The death toll in Gaza now stands at more than 71,000 people, according to local health authorities who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their tally, but say that women and children comprise the majority of the casualties. After disputing supposed “Hamas data” for months, the Israel Defense Forces accepted that figure as likely accurate, according to reports by the Times of Israel and Haaretz citing an unnamed senior Israeli military official giving a media briefing last week. The official also acknowledged, as Gaza’s Health Ministry does, that it does not account for those missing or bodies trapped beneath the territory’s more than 61 million tons of rubble. When asked about the reports, an IDF official told The Washington Post that the briefing occurred but clarified that the 70,000 casualty figure is not authorized by the military. |
![Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians who, according to medics, were killed by an Israeli strike on Saturday, at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. (Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters)]() |
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians who, according to medics, were killed by an Israeli strike on Saturday, at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. (Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters) |
Seen two years later, the cable reported by Reuters is a small footnote of history. Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid into Gaza during large spells of the conflict led to spiraling crises within the enclave. Various U.N. agencies said famine conditions prevailed in parts of the territory. Most of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is destroyed and full reconstruction will take decades. USAID, which President Donald Trump and his allies cast as a “woke” waste of money, has been almost entirely dismantled since he took office. Last week, there were a few somber commemorations for the two-year anniversary of the killing of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl who was the last to succumb to her wounds in a family car after it was targeted by apparent Israeli fire. “My daughter was just one among tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza whose stories ended before they began,” her mother wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “At least 20,000 children have been killed since October 2023. Twenty thousand futures erased.” More than 500 people in Gaza have been killed and hundreds more injured since a ceasefire took effect Oct. 11, according to local health authorities. Over the weekend, Israeli strikes prompted by alleged Hamas militant activity hit various targets, killing 32 people, the majority of whom were women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The attacks drew condemnation from foreign governments, including Egypt, a key mediator of the conflict, which decried Israel’s “repeated violations” of the ceasefire. The Trump administration proceeded Friday with its latest authorization of weapons transfers to Israel — a tranche of almost $6.7 billion worth of attack helicopters and armored vehicles. In a shift from the Biden era, a growing number of Democrats have sought to cancel offensive weapons sales to Israel. As my colleagues reported, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (New York), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Trump administration had sidestepped the committee review process for significant arms sales for the transactions involving Israel. “This is yet another repudiation by Donald Trump of Congress’ Constitutional oversight role,” he said in a statement, adding that the administration was also “refusing to engage Congress on critical questions about the next steps in Gaza and broader U.S.-Israel policy.” |
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Jared Kushner speaks in front of a "Gaza Timeline" at the "Board of Peace" meeting during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) |
The White House has pressed ahead with its ambitious plans to remake Gaza, which it unveiled at a splashy ceremony last month in Davos, Switzerland. Trump’s “Board of Peace,” a grouping of nations that have thrown their imprimatur behind the administration’s efforts, and a new technocratic committee set up to administer Gaza, are in the early stages of determining how to transform the territory’s ruin into a glitzy redevelopment, replete with coastal skyscrapers and luxury facilities. What that means for Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians is still unclear, with many cynical about Trump and Israel’s vision for their future. “Someday, once the rubble has been cleared and the dust has settled enough for investors to swoop in, the Palestinians warehoused in these enclaves may be deemed useful again—not as citizens with rights, but as cheap labor to serve the vultures who will reap the profit,” wrote Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a U.S. policy fellow at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka. In the wake of this weekend’s violence, Ali Shaath, the Palestinian technocrat tapped to steer the transition in Gaza, issued a plea for calm. “The path forward must be one of restraint, responsibility, and respect for civilian life,” he urged without mentioning any of Gaza’s warring parties by name. |
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