Former Biden officials say Israel never told them Hamas was stealing aid
Officials from the Biden administration, Jack Lew and David Satterfield, have said that, contrary to Israeli claims, the theft of aid in Gaza during their time in the office was “primarily the work of criminal gangs”.
“Neither the [Israeli army] nor the UN ever shared evidence with us – or asserted to us privately – that Hamas was physically diverting US-funded goods,” the pair said in a joint op-ed in Foreign Affairs.
Lew, who served as US ambassador to Israel, and Satterfield, former Middle East humanitarian envoy, said that “Hamas did find ways to tax, extort, and to some extent divert aid”. But there was “no evidence of substantial Hamas diversion of any major assistance funded by the UN or nongovernmental organizations”.
Israel says that Hamas has systematically stolen aid, using this claim to justify the creation of controversial US and Israel-backed contractor GHF, whose aid distribution sites have been the scene of hundreds of aid seeker deaths.
Words, statements, news releases ‘won’t end the genocide’
Every aspect of civilian life in Gaza has been “decimated”, Chris Doyle, the director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding, has told Al Jazeera.
“Right now in Gaza, what you see with the starvation is exacerbated by some of the hottest temperatures that the region has ever experienced. Imagine being where it’s already unhygienic, where disease is spreading and you have little clean water, and trying to survive that in 40 degree-plus [104 degree-plus-Fahrenheit] temperatures,” he said.
Doyle added that “words, statements and press releases” being issued by world leaders “won’t end the genocide. … It won’t feed starving babies or bring those who have been killed back to life.
“International leadership is AWOL. It’s gone missing. There’s no moral compass, and we are watching this genocide being livestreamed with none of the sort of actions that one normally would expect when such major violations of international law are being committed in the full gaze of the international community,” he said.
