In April this year, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is known to have been involved in covert operations for regime change, delivered its report on Gaza to Congress. It concluded that Israel is deliberately blocking aid from reaching Palestinians in the enclave. So did the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, which called for freezing the Foreign Assistance Act which funds weapons purchases for Israel.
However, upon receiving the reports — one from within his own department, the other from an “independent agency that works closely” with his department — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance.”
Meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv earlier this week, Blinken cautioned the occupation state that more needs to be done to address the humanitarian conditions in Gaza. According to spokesperson Matthew Miller, “The Secretary noted the imperative to restore sustained humanitarian aid to Gaza and reiterated the importance of ending the war in a way that secures the release of hostages and creates the conditions for broader regional stability.”
There is, of course, no such thing as sustained humanitarian aid during genocide. The aim of genocide is to annihilate a population, therefore to insist on humanitarian aid while a genocide is ongoing rather than calling for the genocide to stop is an aberration. Moreover, ending the war to release the hostages and create regional stability says nothing about what is to happen to the Palestinian people.
We must ask, therefore, if the Palestinians will continue to be exploited and killed in the name of humanitarian aid and “regional stability”? Is the US, like Israel, envisaging a Middle East without Palestinians, hence no clear mention of Palestinians and their fate in Miller’s statement?
And in that case, is not the US actively promoting the continuation of genocide as long as the Palestinians can be fed, watered and healed before being killed?
Let us not forget that Israel is also leading the narrative pushing for war with Iran. With such grandiose colonial plans, including genocide and all-out war, what is the specific role of humanitarian aid?
I’ll tell you what it is. Humanitarian aid is designed as a temporary alleviation of suffering. So much so that its budget is inconsequential in comparison with the billions spent on arms and ammunition. With such a massive discrepancy, the international community – the relics of colonial powers – should be taken to task over devising flawed programs which contribute to the kill toll of human beings.
Forcing Israel to stop its genocide against Palestinians so that humanitarian aid can start alleviating their suffering follows a coherent trajectory. Calling for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza while allowing the genocide to continue is merely another way of the US saying, “Feed Palestinians and kill them later”.
Back to Miller’s statement summarizing Blinken’s comments and “sustained humanitarian aid”. Israel, don’t forget, has vowed to starve Palestinians and is actively doing so. Even USAID has admitted to knowing about Israel’s violations, which is astonishing given that it states on its website that it “plays an active and critical role in the promotion of US foreign policy interests.” Someone, either Blinken or USAID staffers, didn’t get the memo.
While no US agency can ever be trusted, and humanitarian aid is tangled-up with diplomacy and defense issues, the fact remains that Blinken ignored his own people’s conclusion about Israel’s deliberate deprivation of humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and he did so in order to keep supplying weapons for the genocide in Gaza. Former and current colonial powers now control us all with total disregard for the international laws and conventions that they created for their own protection.
-Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America. Her article appeared in MEMO.
