Palestinians' plight caused bitter infighting in Biden admin

Jack Lew, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, speaks at the “United We Bring Them Home” rally in Hostage Square on May 18th, 2024 in Tel Aviv. (Meanwhile, Israel is holding over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women, children, and American citizens; many have never been charged with a crime or had a trial.)

A U.S.-funded report declaring that famine was underway in north Gaza was censored by officials in the Biden administration… among those involved were Sonali Korde, a senior USAID official, and Jack Lew, U.S. ambassador to Israel and a staunch advocate for Israel

By John Hudson, reposted from Washington Post

The ceasefire deal announced this week between Israel and Hamas brings hope for northern Gaza, where the desperate conditions have caused one of the most rancorous disputes among President Joe Biden’s humanitarian officials since the start of the 15-month war.

Under the terms of the deal, more than 500 trucks of humanitarian aid will be delivered to Gaza every day, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, with roughly half of those supplies expected to be directed north. The area has been home to thousands of people without access to food, water, electricity or health care amid an Israeli military siege, according to the United Nations.

The inability of aid workers to access the area has created confusion and disagreement about the severity of the conditions there, culminating in a U.S.-funded report declaring in December that famine was underway in northern Gaza — a claim denied by the Israeli government.

“Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies to besieged areas of North Gaza Governorate … has been in place for nearly 80 days,” read the report. “In the absence of a change to Israeli policy,” the report predicted that at least two to 15 people would die each day beginning as early as January.

The report, produced by the famine-tracking organization Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) just weeks before Biden was due to leave the White House, threatened to further tarnish the administration’s legacy in Gaza and was challenged internally by a senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“This title says that a Famine is unfolding without any caveats,” Sonali Korde, a senior USAID official, wrote to FEWS NET in correspondence obtained by The Washington Post. She “strongly” recommended that the organization responsible for the report change the title to say “risk” of a famine instead — a less severe assessment that the authors of the report said was not supported by the available facts.

Korde did not respond to a request for comment.

When the report published in late December without changes to the title, the Biden administration ordered the famine warning be deleted from FEWS NET’s website — the first such retraction in the organization’s 40-year relationship with the U.S. government.

Three U.S. officials told The Post that the decision caused a firestorm among staff at USAID, and raised fears that governments in Africa and elsewhere would question the credibility of the famine-warning organization, which receives $60 million each year from USAID. These officials, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal disagreements.

“The perception is that USAID put its thumb on the scale to shield Israel and the United States from criticism,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International. “FEWS NET is the gold standard in famine tracking and this is the type of incident that can just demolish its credibility.”

USAID told The Post that the report was retracted because it relied on outdated population data for northern Gaza, which has experienced a major exodus of Palestinians due to the ongoing Israeli siege. The key metrics for quantifying a famine in Gaza are the size of the population and the amount of food coming in; a smaller population does not require as much food and may avoid a famine classification.

“In such a dynamic situation, it is critical that population data and flow of assistance reflects the situation on the ground during the period analyzed,” the agency said.

Publicly criticizing the famine report based on a drop in northern Gaza’s population is a tactic some senior administration officials wanted to avoid because doing so only underscored how the besieged area has become unlivable.

But Jack Lew, the U.S. ambassador to Israel and a staunch advocate for the country within the Biden administration, slammed the famine report publicly, calling it “inaccurate” and “irresponsible” — and noting that Israeli estimates put the post-exodus population in northern Gaza at between 5,000 and 9,000.

The basis of Lew’s critique appeared to be that FEWS NET relied on larger population estimates furnished by the United Nations instead of the Israeli government’s data. But that’s no justification for calling the report irresponsible, aid experts said.

“He directly mischaracterized what the document actually said,” Konyndyk said.

Lew declined requests for comment.

A copy of the retracted FEWS NET report obtained by The Post includes a U.N. estimate that 65,000 to 75,000 people remained in northern Gaza as of Nov. 16, but it also noted that another U.N. estimate of the population “may be as low as 10,000 to 15,000.”

The report states that while there are varying estimates of northern Gaza’s population data, famine conditions apply “provided that the population being analyzed amounts to at least 10,000 people.” U.S. officials and aid experts say famine reports routinely cite data from previous months and provide the necessary caveats and qualifications.

When asked about the restrictions on humanitarian assistance, an Israeli official denied that Israel is blocking aid to northern Gaza and said it places no limits on humanitarian aid to the enclave. The official noted an Israeli news release Tuesday that says “three fuel tankers were coordinated to northern Gaza for the refueling of bakeries.”

The United Nations, in a report this month, said access to northern Gaza “remains extremely challenging and partners’ ongoing attempts to deliver aid into these besieged areas continues to be largely prevented.”

The United Nations claimed that from early October to late December, U.N. officials attempted to “reach besieged areas in North Gaza 164 times; of these, 148 attempts were denied by the Israeli authorities and 16 were impeded.”

Now that a ceasefire deal has been reached, there is a sense of hope that more assistance can move into northern Gaza and Palestinians can return to their homes there.

“We really do believe that a ceasefire unlocks the potential to massively surge humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” said Miller, the State Department spokesman, “and we have been working with humanitarian partners over the past few months to ensure that they are ready to surge that assistance as soon as the ceasefire is implemented.”

But aid experts warned that many logistical challenges remain.

“There are still a lot of unknowns about the arrangements for entry of goods, including how and where goods will be able to enter and whether they will enter in the quantities needed,” said Tania Hary, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization. “It appears that restrictions will remain on people crossing Netzarim northwards in the near period, according to reports, but we don’t know whether aid will be able to flow freely.”