Israel/Palestine

In one of its most direct and sweeping warnings to date, the Biden administration told Israeli government officials on Sunday that if they did not improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza in the next 30 days, the U.S. could reevaluate its military support, which has flowed largely without pause for more than a year.

In a letter to Israel’s ministers of defense and strategic affairs, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said they were writing to “underscore the U.S. government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory.” The letter was first reported by Israeli media and confirmed Tuesday by the State Department’s top spokesperson.

Last month, ProPublica detailed how the U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance — the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugees bureau — concluded this past spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. Those experts determined that weapons sales should be halted under a U.S. law, known as the Foreign Assistance Act, that requires the government to cut off military aid to a country that is blocking humanitarian efforts.

Blinken rejected their findings and, weeks later, told Congress that the State Department had concluded that Israel was not arbitrarily blocking aid. After the U.S. government raised concerns, the Israelis promised to allow more aid to flow.

Those pledges do not appear to have been met. According to Blinken and Austin’s letter, September was the worst month for relief efforts in the past year. The amount of aid has dropped by more than 50% since the spring. Israelis halted imports to Palestinian civilians, denied or impeded 90% of humanitarian movements between northern and southern Gaza last month, and imposed onerous new requirements for trucks carrying critical supplies, the letter says.

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