Washington, DC – The United States was unambiguous in a message to Israel last month: Take specific steps within 30 days to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or face consequences.
The deadline has now passed, and the United Nations is warning that famine is “imminent” in parts of northern Gaza. But there will be no consequences for Israel, the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
“We, at this time, have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters.
He argued that Israel had made “some progress” to allow more aid into the besieged territory but the US “would like to see some more changes happen”.
Patel would not say whether the specific conditions set out by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin in an October 13 letter to Israeli leaders had been met.
The US assertion caused fury among Palestinian rights advocates, who dismissed the entire push as another ploy to distract from Washington’s complicity in Israel’s killing and starvation of Palestinians.
It also came on the same day that Biden met Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House, where the latter said they held a “productive meeting”.
‘Charade’
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, policy fellow at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, a US-based think tank, called the Blinken-Austin letter, which was presented as an ultimatum, a “charade”.
“Biden has no intention of using his final months in office to better the humanitarian situation in Gaza or work towards a lasting ceasefire or hostage exchange, despite what he might say, and it should be clear that every step his administration has taken has been to buy Israel time and shield it from accountability,” Kenney-Shawa told Al Jazeera in a statement.
Hours before Patel made his remarks, several humanitarian groups issued a joint report, concluding that not only did Israel fail to improve the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, but the situation has deteriorated since the US issued the letter.
The organisations – which include the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International and Save the Children – accused Israel of taking “actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza”.
“Israel has failed to comply with its ally’s demands – at enormous human cost for Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” they said.
The Blinken-Austin warning had pressed Israel to ease the humanitarian situation in Gaza or else risk “implications” under US law, which prohibits security assistance to countries that block US-backed humanitarian aid.
The US-requested measures included allowing at least 350 aid trucks to enter Gaza daily, implementing humanitarian pauses to enable the distribution of the assistance, rescinding displacement orders “when there is no operational need” and ending the “isolation of northern Gaza”.
According to a recent Brown University research paper, the US provided Israel with $17.9bn in military aid over the past year, covering a significant part of the cost of the war on Gaza.
‘Famine is imminent’
The US security aid to Israel will continue to flow, the State Department announced on Tuesday, with Patel saying that there would be no change in policy.
However, Israel has not come close to fulfilling the US demands on humanitarian aid. For example, instead of 350 aid trucks a day, an average of 42 trucks entered Gaza daily over the past 30 days, according to the humanitarian groups.
“Israeli forces continue to besiege North Gaza and have ordered civilians to leave – including patients from the main hospitals – demonstrating its intention to forcibly evacuate civilians in practice,” the aid organisations said in their assessment.
On Friday, a UN-backed hunger-tracking body described the situation in Gaza as “extremely grave and rapidly deteriorating”.
“There is a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip,” it said.
It is unclear how the US came to its conclusion against the findings of rights groups and experts. Patel refused to comment on the process that led to the decision.
A ProPublica report in September said Blinken had ignored findings by his own staff as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to certify that Israel is not blocking aid to Gaza.
Israel appears to have intensified its blockade in Gaza in recent weeks. Early in October, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the entire population of northern Gaza and stopped aid from entering the area.
Critics have accused Israel of enforcing a plan, devised by former generals, that calls for emptying northern Gaza of its residents in what could amount to ethnic cleansing.
Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison, development director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the US decision shows that the Biden administration is a full partner in Israel’s war on Gaza, which she described as a genocide.
“The fact that they even allowed them an additional 30 days to continue the starvation and slaughter in the first place is – in and of itself – unfathomable, outrageous and already in violation of US law,” Ashrawi Hutchison told Al Jazeera.
“This is merely more proof added to the heaps of evidence confirming and documenting the US administration’s depravity and partnerships in widespread crimes against humanity.”
‘Morally bankrupt’
Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR), slammed the Biden administration’s seemingly boundless support for Israel regardless of what the US ally does to Palestinians.
“This administration continues to show that it is morally bankrupt,” Abuznaid told Al Jazeera. “Not only can it not be trusted to tell the truth, it cannot be trusted to follow international law or US law in its support of this genocide.”
Many Palestinian rights advocates had little hope that the letter would lead to an actual shift in policy. The ultimatum itself was an admission that the Biden administration was in violation of the law, they argued.
US regulations – as spelled out by Section 620I of the US Foreign Assistance Act – prohibit military assistance to countries that restrict humanitarian aid; they don’t offer a 30-day grace period.
“The Biden administration is just hoping that people won’t pay attention to that letter because they never intended to do anything about it anyway, clearly,” Annelle Sheline, research fellow for the Middle East at the Quincy Institute think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the US-based rights group DAWN, said the October 13 letter showed that the Biden administration was aware of Israeli abuses. She warned that violations of US and international law open US officials to prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“If President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin continue to support Israel after this letter with full knowledge of its well-documented violations, they could be putting themselves at risk of ICC prosecution for enabling Israeli crimes,” Whitson said in a statement.
Alice Speri contributed to the reporting.
