Biden gives Israel 30 days to boost aid to Gaza or risk cuts in military assistance. Will it be another empty threat?

PREM THAKKER, ZETEO, OCT 18, 2024

Early Thursday morning, I was woken by a distressed call from a doctor in Gaza, telling me of an Israeli strike on a school in the Jabalia refugee camp that killed dozens of Palestinians and injured scores of others. Hours later, I asked the State Department whether the US is actually enforcing its laws regarding military aid to governments committing violations of international humanitarian law.

The response from State Department spokesman Matthew Miller? 

He accused me of wanting to end all US support for Israel. 

Here’s how part of the exchange went:

Zeteo: There have been previous instances for which this threat has been floated [by the US]… and yet there hasn’t been any actualization of it. 

Miller: So, I know that your objective is to see the end of US support to Israel. Our objective is to see Israel take steps to increase humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza…

My question was centered around a contradiction: On Sunday, the Biden administration sent a letter to Israel, warning that if it did not do more to boost aid into Gaza, there could be US policy “implications.” But just days later, Politico reported that a State Department official told aid groups in late August that the US would not withhold weapons to Israel for blocking food and medicine into Gaza.

So, the series of events necessitated a question as to whether the US would or would not enforce its own laws, especially since it evidently has not over the past year, despite human rights organizations, UN officials, and international courts of law suggesting Israel has indeed violated international law.

Beyond this specific moment, a broader pattern has emerged in how the US has behaved over a year of the Israeli government’s alleged human rights violations. The Biden administration cannot decide whether Israel is blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza because the situation is so “complicated.” Yet, there appears to be no corresponding complexity in deciding whether or not to send more bombs to Israel.

Empty Threat? 

On one hand, Sunday’s warning letter was among the strongest known US communications to Israel over the last year – it included specific demands, revealed previous US attempts to raise concerns of civilian harm have failed, and suggested material consequences. At the same time, however, the letter gives the Israeli government 30 days to act, and follows a year of the US urging its “partners in Israel” to essentially commit genocide more gently.

Thirty days is a lot of time. To put that in context, Israeli forces killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza between Oct. 7 and Nov. 7 (While some may argue that’s when the rate of killing was at its highest, the number of people left to treat patients or keep track of deaths at all has drastically declined — some estimates say the true death toll may have already surpassed 100,000).

The 30-day deadline will also come after the US election. Critics have panned the timing as a ploy to forestall action and lazily throw a bone to voters demanding change, without necessarily guaranteeing it.

And that tracks with other instances of Biden warning he would take action against Israel, but backing off when push came to shove. 

In May, for example, the president said the US would not send weapons to Israel if it launched a major invasion of Rafah. Nevertheless, Israel has forcibly displaced some one million people from Rafah. Israeli strikes on tent camps and “safe zones” have killed and injured hundreds, and 44% of buildings in Rafah have been either destroyed or damaged. 

The US has announced the sale of more than $20 billion of weapons to Israel, along with other arms transfers, since Biden’s “warning.”

If the conditions were as dire as the US seems to admit, why would it wait 30 whole days – given the suffering Israel has inflicted on Palestinians every single day – unless the US had a tolerance for that suffering?

Two days before Biden warned Israel not to conduct a major invasion of Rafah, on May 7, the Israeli government shut down the Rafah border crossing. The move closed the only route to Egypt – blocking patients from evacuating and preventing food and medicine from coming in.

Three days later, on May 10, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress: “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance” — contrary to what the US Agency for International Development and the State Department’s own refugees bureau said. That same day, the State Department released its confused memo in which it concluded that yes, it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel used US-supplied weapons in violation of international law, but no, it would not stop sending those weapons to Israel.

Another three days later, Israeli forces killed an Indian UN staffer traveling in a marked UN vehicle in Rafah. 

Before and after Blinken’s May announcement, Israeli demonstrators blocked aid crossings, stymieing the movement of hundreds of aid trucks holding thousands of pounds of food and medicine — all without the Israeli government doing much to put a total stop to it.

This reality could only make sense if Blinken’s statement was perhaps supposed to be taken as literally as possible: We do not currently (at this very second) assess Israel to be blocking aid. In the same fashion, Biden’s warning that a major Israeli operation risked US military aid could only make sense if he perhaps meant: Israel, you cannot do one massive invasion all at once, but you can do daily mini-invasions that cause the same amount of damage.

As the world witnesses a US-backed war more properly dubbed a genocide, so too it encounters a US-endeavored war of words more properly dubbed – to borrow a line from Biden himself – malarkey.

Willful Contradiction 

Throughout the year, the US has sought to have it both ways: Israel is not violating international humanitarian law, but its standards are insufficient. The US has treated international law as a spectrum, as if there are different prongs to the metric of whether thousands are tortured and starved, or are not; whether they live, or die.

In April, after Israeli forces killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, including an American, Biden said, “Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.”

The May memo said as much: While Israel may have committed war crimes with US bombs, “it is also important to emphasize that a country’s overall commitment” to international law “is not necessarily disproven by individual violations, so long as that country is taking appropriate steps to investigate and where appropriate determine accountability.”

While there was “no direct indication of Israel intentionally targeting civilians,” the memo stated, “Israel could do more to avoid civilian harm.”

The language was echoed recently after Israeli forces killed 26-year-old American peace activist Ayşenur Eygi. The State Department conceded the Israeli military has insufficient “rules of engagement.” After I pressed the department on that idea – and thus the implication that the US has been unconditionally supporting an insufficient military – it said Israel would need to change its policies, but rejected the notion of conditioning weapons. 

Is such a dynamic emblematic of a healthy “allied” relationship, if the US sends a government billions unconditionally, and even *then* has to repeatedly “intervene” to urge it to follow international law, all for it seldom to do so anyways?

This week, Miller echoed the framing, saying 30 days would give Israel a chance to “cure the problem.” Reporters noted that a year in, Israel has not “cured” the problem, it created it (and it’s not as if Israel all of a sudden allowing in even thousands of trucks would magically mitigate 41% of people in Gaza facing “catastrophic” hunger — particularly if they keep getting bombed).

Miller contended that the US has intervened “on multiple occasions when we thought the levels of assistance getting in weren’t sufficient when there were policies that needed to be changed.”

The line underscored how weak those interventions have been, given how little aid we know is getting in. After all, for any apparent “progress” (the US cited the opening of border crossings upon its intervention as proof), Israel would promptly snap back to a broader steady state of imposing mass misery.

Is such a dynamic emblematic of a healthy “allied” relationship, if the US sends a government billions unconditionally, and even then has to repeatedly “intervene” to urge it to follow international law, all for it seldom to do so anyways?

The past year has been characterized by one driving pattern: The US claims everything is complicated – it blames Hamas for using human shields and muddling things for Israel. Consequently, when the US admits even some Israeli culpability, the decision is always the same, despite any “complexity”: send more bombs. There is no nuance in the Biden-Harris administration’s eyes: a “complicated” conflict warrants an unhesitating, unconditional supply of bombs.