Report: Blinken has approved Israel’s policy of attacking humanitarian aid trucks

In the early days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a directive requiring Israeli forces to attack humanitarian convoys carrying urgently needed aid for the millions of Palestinians trapped in Gaza, new reports say.

Drop Site NewsCiting reports from Israeli media, a report this week revealed that Israel’s powerful security cabinet had developed a plan for humanitarian assistance amid the genocide, with the cabinet passing drafts of the policy back and forth with Blinken’s office.

Blinken himself was reportedly directly involved in these talks, which took place on October 16 and 17, when civil society in the Gaza Strip was already collapsing due to Israeli attacks on hospitals and the total siege. Blinken and President Joe Biden held another round of meetings with Israel’s security cabinet the next day.

The policy announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel would “thwart” any humanitarian aid shipments that “reach Hamas” – with Drop site noting that the Israeli Defense Forces use the Hebrew word for “thwart” to refer to killings and assassinations. In December of this year, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Security Cabinet, clearly told Israeli media that “aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations would be bombed from the air and aid would be stopped.”

When the policy was announced, Blinken boasted about a US-Israel agreement allowing humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, while claiming the US was reportedly concerned about the withdrawal of humanitarian aid by Hamas members. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel called the reports “absurd.” Drop site reported.

Since then, Israel has relentlessly targeted humanitarian aid convoys, often accusing them of being linked to Hamas – the governing body in Gaza. Israel’s attacks on aid supplies and the near-total aid blockade have led to famine across the Gaza Strip, while experts have warned that the aid blockade is killing tens or even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Numerous humanitarian aid groups and experts have warned that Israel is using disease and famine as weapons of war.

Over the past year, Israeli forces have made Gaza the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers, killing about 300 aid workers in Gaza. More than 200 of those workers were with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which Israeli officials have unilaterally and without evidence labeled a Hamas-affiliated organization.

However, Israel has also targeted other aid convoys, including those coordinated by international groups such as World Central Kitchen and Anera. Human rights groups have documented many incidents in which Israeli forces targeted locations where humanitarian workers were deployed despite knowing their exact coordinates. And Israel has also killed aid workers in Lebanon and the occupied West Bank, where Hamas is not in power.

Meanwhile, UNRWA has reported that Israel is denying visas to aid workers and leaders with the apparent aim of “phasing out” the presence of humanitarian groups in Gaza.

The Drop site The report is the latest evidence that Blinken and the Biden administration either explicitly or implicitly endorse Israel’s policy of producing famine by blocking humanitarian aid.

at the end of last month, ProPublica revealed that two senior U.S. government humanitarian officials decided this spring that the U.S. should suspend some or all arms sales to Israel because Israeli forces were restricting the delivery of aid. But their recommendations were rejected by Blinken, who then lied to Congress about the results.

Their recommendations were two of many within the administration and State Department that, citing U.S. and international law, called on the U.S. to suspend its arms sales to Israel, all of which were virtually dismissed by senior State Department officials.