Joe Biden’s State of the Union address is set to expose growing tensions between the United States and Israel on the topic of foreign aid in Gaza.
The tensions, which have existed for months as the U.S. has called on more aid to be allowed into Gaza and started an airdrop operation to do so, will explode into clear view when Biden announces a plan that will allow for humanitarian aid to get into the besieged strip by land, air, and sea.
Ahead of Biden’s speech on Thursday, Israeli officials pushed back on a “misconception” that “Israel isn’t letting aid in.”
“Let’s clear up a misconception,” Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy tweeted. “The airdrops aren’t happening because ‘Israel isn’t letting aid in.’ They’re in coordination with Israeli authorities. It’s so aid can get to hard-to-reach areas without going through Hamas front UNRWA and its Hamas ‘protection.'”
“Israel is letting adequate aid in, but the aid distribution mechanisms in Gaza are plainly inadequate,” he said in a separate tweet. “Because the UN relies on Hamas front UNRWA and Hamas protection. So we’re working on new ways with private sector, to compensate for that systemic failure.”
Levy also shared information from Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, which stated: “5,160 tons, which are over 11,000,000 pounds of humanitarian aid, were transferred to the Gaza Strip yesterday alone. There are no limits to the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza.”
In contrast to Levy’s stance, Biden said last week that aid flowing into Gaza “is nowhere nearly enough.”
The president is set to announce a plan to build a port in the Mediterranean Sea off Gaza’s coast to increase the amount of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
“This port, the main feature of which is a temporary pier, will provide the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day,” a senior administration official previewed to reporters on Thursday. “We will coordinate with the Israelis on its security requirements on land and work with the U.N. and humanitarian NGOs on the distribution of assistance within Gaza.”
It will take “a number of weeks to plan and execute,” the official added, noting that the initial shipments will be enabled by the United States and come from Cyprus. The plan includes U.S. troops staying on military vessels offshore but does not involve them going ashore to install the pier or causeway facility.
It is not yet clear how the aid will be distributed, though the U.S. will be working with the United Nations and other humanitarian partners to devise a strategy, the official said.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials facilitated only about half of the more than 220 aid missions planned for Gaza last month, according to a U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs statement released Thursday.
There were 24 planned missions to northern Gaza and 200 south of Wadi Gaza, while only six were carried out in the former area and 105 in the latter. There would have been more planned aid missions,, according to the OCHA, but there was an operational pause after a U.N.-coordinated convoy heading north was hit by Israeli naval fire on Feb. 5.
“Hunger has reached catastrophic levels,” Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said on Wednesday. “Children are dying from hunger.”
McGoldrick said northern Gaza needs at least 300 aid trucks every day to support the humanitarian needs there.
The Israeli government has agreed to set up a new crossing for aid from Israel into Gaza that will be in the north, a U.S. senior administration official told reporters on Thursday.
“We expect the first delivery to transit this crossing over the coming week, starting with a pilot and then ramping up,” the official said.
The U.S. has also carried out three airdrops of more than 110,000 meals into the strip this week.
“The problem has multiple routes,” a senior administration official told reporters last weekend. “But essentially what has gone on is: With the removal of police from the protective duties, U.N. and other convoys, Emirati, Jordanian, Palestine Red Crescent, lawlessness, which was always a problem in the background, has now moved to a very different level. This is a product of, if you will, commercialization of the assistance — criminal gangs are taking it, looting it, reselling it. They’ve monetized humanitarian assistance.”
The head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the greatest need for aid is in the north, which is much less populated than before the war because Israel urged civilians to flee south to avoid the front lines.
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“The challenge is the security and distribution internal to Gaza,” Kurilla explained.
David Satterfield, the special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, said last month that it has been “virtually impossible” for any entity to “safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs” because the de facto police, some of whom have ties with Hamas, stopped escorting the aid.
