Blinken Approved Policy to Bomb Aid Trucks, Israeli Cabinet Members Suggest

Benjamin Netanyahu and Antony Blinken on their way to a meeting of the Israeli War Cabinet, October 16, 2023. Israeli Government Press Office handout via Getty.

From the very beginning of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had his hands on the steering wheel. After October 7, Blinken was the first senior U.S. official to arrive in Israel, on October 11. "I'm going with a very simple and clear message... that the United States has Israel's back," Blinken reportedly said before boarding the plane. 

He returned again days later. This time, Blinken was there to demand that Israel rethink its decision to bomb any humanitarian aid entering Gaza and impose a “total siege” on the Strip. In exchange, U.S. President Joe Biden offered to visit Israel himself. Reportedly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained to Blinken upon his arrival on October 16, 2023: “I have got people in the cabinet who don’t want an aspirin to get into Gaza because of what’s happened.”

From within the Kirya, the Israeli military’s main headquarters in Tel Aviv, Blinken participated in the frantic discussions of the Israeli War Cabinet—the decision-making forum guiding the genocidal campaign—that were occuring in parallel to conversations in the broader Security Cabinet.

According to Channel 12 reporter Yaron Avraham, on October 16 and 17, “the [Security] Cabinet deliberated for hours over the precise wording of the decision, with each draft being passed between the Cabinet room and Blinken's room, a distance of a few meters away, inside the Kirya…. Eventually, around 3 a.m., they arrive at an agreed upon text that is read in the Cabinet room in English.”

Avraham’s account of the process was independently corroborated by a reporter for the competing Channel 13, who wrote: “The discussion with Blinken is conducted as follows: he is sitting in a room in the Kirya with his advisors and security team, while Security Cabinet holds the discussion; [Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron] Dermer goes back and forth and interfaces with him.”

Blinken, for his part, concluded the day with a triumphant speech taking responsibility for the restarting of humanitarian aid to Gaza:

To that end, today, and at our request, the United States and Israel have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza – and them alone – including the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians our of harm’s way.  It is critical that aid begin flowing into Gaza as soon as possible.

We share Israel’s concern that Hamas may seize or destroy aid entering Gaza or otherwise preventing it from reaching the people who need it.  If Hamas in any way blocks humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians, including by seizing the aid itself, we’ll be the first to condemn it and we will work to prevent it from happening again.

The following day, after an additional round of Cabinet meetings, this time helmed by both Blinken and Biden, an outline of the decision was publicly announced by Prime Minster’s Netanyahu’s office: “We will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip” and, in a separate Hebrew version, “In light of President Biden's demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population located in the southern Gaza Strip or moving there, and as long as these supplies do not reach Hamas. Any supplies that reach Hamas will be thwarted.” The Hebrew word לסכל, “to thwart,” is frequently used by Israel to describe targeted killings and assassinations. The previous policy of "thwarting" all humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza was conveyed to Egypt as an explicit threat to "bomb" aid trucks.

The substance of the Blinken-approved policy was starkly conveyed by Security Cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, who later told the Israeli media: “We in the cabinet were promised at the outset that there would be monitoring, and that aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations [sic] would be bombed from the air, and the aid would be halted.”

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told Drop Site News: “The suggestion that anyone at the State Department signed off in any way on attacks on humanitarian workers or convoys is absurd. We have always been clear, including in the immediate aftermath of October 7, that Israel has the right to strike Hamas militants. Secretary Blinken has been equally clear that Israel needs to ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered to Gaza and that humanitarian workers inside Gaza are protected.” The State Department did not clarify whether it approved carrying out airstrikes against Hamas militants (or those indiscriminately classified as militants) who secure aid convoys or seize their contents.

“Minimal Aid Should Be Allowed”

For Smotrich and other Israeli policymakers, the U.S.’s approval of the policy presented an opportunity to realize aspirations they had harbored long before October 7th. Already in 2018, as Palestinians in Gaza resisted the Israeli blockade—jokingly referred to by the Israeli government as “an appointment with a dietician”—through mass protests, Smotrich stated: “As far as I'm concerned, Gaza should be hermetically sealed. We shouldn't provide them anything. Let them die of hunger, thirst, and malaria. I don't care, they are not my citizens, I owe them nothing”.

The first part of the humanitarian aid policy approved by Blinken—the barring of entry of aid from within Israeli territory—was short-lived. By December 2023, aid had begun entering directly through Israel, and from the very first moment Israel’s monitoring mechanism, implemented shortly after the meetings on October 16 and 17, required all aid, regardless of origin, to go through checks within Israel before reaching Gaza, resulting in major delays. But the second policy—the “thwarting” of aid shipments within Gaza if they “reach Hamas”—also proved to be an effective tool in Israel’s arsenal when it came to starving the Gazan population.

As 2023 came to an end, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution to facilitate the entry of aid into Gaza, which had been significantly watered down under U.S. pressure. UN Secretary General António Guterres explained: “Many people are measuring the effectiveness of the humanitarian operation in Gaza based on the number of trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent, the UN, and our partners that are allowed to unload aid across the border. This is a mistake. The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza.” 

Aid that had made it through into Gaza without rotting, despite delays caused by the military and by Israeli protesters egged on by the government to block aid trucks, had to then be distributed within Gaza using a handful of trucks Israel allowed to operate in The Strip, running on barely available fuel, driven under fire over destroyed roads filled with unexploded munitions, and delivered without real time communications due to blackouts imposed by the Israeli government. For over a million refugees confined to the south of The Strip, whatever food they had received had to then be stored in tents, using increasingly scarce containers. Meanwhile, the domestic food production capacity of Gaza has been decimated through the deliberate and gleeful destruction of agriculture by the IDF and bakeries. 

Guterres’s remarks were quoted in the application made by the South African government to the International Court of Justice one week later, alongside comments from a senior official from UNRWA, which has coordinated most of the humanitarian efforts in Gaza, characterizing the resolution as “a greenlight for continued genocide.”

On January 26, a panel of 17 judges found “a real and imminent risk” to the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention. On the very same day, the U.S. cut funding for UNRWA after a narrative aggressively promoted by Israel Knesset members that the agency—which employed tens of thousands in the Gaza Strip—was also employing an untold number of members of Hamas and that “terrorists” had been students in UNRWA-run schools. 

UNRWA “is a complete cover up for Hamas activities and terrorist activities,” Knesset member Sharren Haskel told the foreign media. “Hamas has taken over this organization.”

Speaking to the Israeli media, Haskel, who has along with the rest of the New Hope party joined the government coalition this week, added, "There are 13,000 UNRWA workers in the Gaza Strip, and they are all Hamas members or their relatives."

The funding freeze, which has been described at the time as a “temporary pause,” has largely persisted to this day, crippling the agency’s humanitarian efforts. In UNRWA’s stead, Israel cultivated relations with foreign NGOs, most notably World Central Kitchen, who refrained from criticizing Israeli policy or insisting on a ceasefire, and lacked the infrastructure and expertise to make up for the debilitation of UNRWA.

Around the same time, Netanyahu repeatedly emphasized in public speeches that the amount of aid Israel is allowing into Gaza is “minimal.” Former Brigadier General Effi Eitam, who reportedly became one of Netanyahu’s close confidants and advisors in the wake of October 7th, shed light on the meaning of the phrase: “Regarding the humanitarian aid, minimal aid should be allowed, and when I say minimal this means—not to shy away from a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There are no innocents in Gaza.”

On February 6th 2024, Security Cabinet member Gidon Sa’ar, head of the right wing New Hope party (which has since left the coalition), criticized the shift in policy. In a Zoom call with party members, Sa’ar declared “I'm currently of the opinion that humanitarian aid to Gaza should be halted immediately, until the formulation of a humanitarian aid [mechanism] which will not be subject to Hamas takeovers, nor the distribution of aid by Hamas to the civilian population.”

This policy, Sa’ar said, was already anchored in “a [Security] Cabinet decision that was made at the beginning of the war, which stated that the humanitarian supply from Egypt will be allowed as long as this supply did not reach Hamas, and that the supply that does reach Hamas will be thwarted.” According to him, the policy was endorsed by “The United States of America … in the talks that took place in the middle of October, including the talks with Secretary of State Blinken, who was visiting [Israel] and took part in discussions, mainly with the War Cabinet, on the subject of humanitarian aid.” 

“Right now,” he said, “on the eve of another visit of the American Secretary of State in Israel, we must revive this idea, so as not to undermine the aim I mentioned earlier, which is one of the war aims, which is the destruction of Hamas's governmental capabilities.”

Aid Attacks

As Sa’ar was speaking, Israeli policy was already shifting. On February 5th, the Israeli military shelled an UNRWA aid truck, leading the agency and the World Food Program to halt aid missions for weeks. The IDF spokesperson told the media the incident was “under review” and refused to provide additional details. One day later, however, Israeli outlet i24NEWS reported, based on unnamed “security sources” that the IDF had targeted “stolen Gaza aid trucks that Hamas uses as transportation for ammunition.” 

That same day an Israeli airstrike targeted a police car which provided security escort to a flour truck, “ripping the passengers to pieces” according to witnesses. Leaflets bearing the picture of the destroyed vehicle were later dropped by the Israeli military over Gaza, warning: “Our message is clear; the Israeli security services will not allow the security apparatuses of Hamas to continue working.”

By February 9th, UNRWA’s director, Philippe Lazzarini, told the press that the Israeli military had assassinated eight Palestinian police officers who were providing escorts to humanitarian aid convoys. A few days later, then-U.S. State Department special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield cited the targeting of Hamas’s aid truck security escorts by the Israeli military as a major obstacle for the delivery of aid: “With the departure of police escorts, it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else, Jordan, the UAE, or any other implementer to safely move assistance in Gaza.”

On March 28, the International Court of Justice noted “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over recent weeks,” and ordered Israel to “take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay… the unhindered provision… of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care.”

Less than 24 hours later, Israel reportedly targeted and killed several local policemen who were securing aid deliveries in two separate attacks, along with some of their family members and unrelated bystander. And on the next day, the Israeli military killed 12 people, among them officials representing tribal committees, who were coordinating aid distribution efforts.

Two days later, Israel’s favored aid provider, World Central Kitchen, fell victim to the same policy: over the course of several minutes an IDF drone pursued a 7-member WCK team driving along a designated route, and, in three different airstrikes several kilometers apart, targeted and killed every single one of them. The vehicles, marked with a WCK logo which the IDF claimed was not visible through the drone’s thermal camera, were driving along a preapproved route, escorting an aid convoy on a mission coordinated with the Israeli military. 

World Central Kitchen subsequently decided to halt their aid operations in Gaza, though they later resumed it.

The Israeli military ended up putting the blame on Colonel Nochi Mendel, who ordered the strike, and has previously expressed support for halting aid provision to Gaza. Mendel’s punishment amounted to being let go from his military service, and going back to his prestigious day job as director of the Settlement Department at the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

But the right wing Makor Rishon newspaper concluded, on the basis of conversations with drone operators involved in the assassination of the aid workers, that Mendel was only implementing the official policy jointly set by Blinken and the Israeli cabinet back in October: “The mission order made it clear that the IDF is instructed to thwart an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take over the aid trucks that entered Gaza. The IDF received this instruction from the Security Cabinet at the beginning of the war, sometime around October 18, 2023, following heavy pressure from the United States.”

Concerns raised by the drone operators about hitting aid workers were dismissed by their commanders, who insisted on strict adherence to the order, “no matter what.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reacted to the killing of the WCK aid workers by stating: “Humanitarian workers are heroes. They show the best of what humanity has to offer. I extend my deepest condolences to those who lost their lives in the strike on WCK in Gaza. There must be a swift, thorough, and impartial investigation into this incident.” 

But follow-ups by U.S. press in the next few months revealed the State Department was happy to have the investigation conducted by the president and CEO of one of Israel's largest arms manufacturers. The ultimate culprit for the killings—the policy that Blinken had brokered—was not amended.

In his statement to Drop Site News, Patel, the State Department Spokesperson, claimed: “We have intervened directly with the Israeli government on multiple occasions to insist they improve deconfliction mechanisms to avoid harm to humanitarian workers. Strikes on humanitarian workers are unacceptable, and Israel has a responsibility to do everything in its power to avoid them.” Patel’s statement did not specify whether the U.S. has insisted Israel abandon its policy of targeting the Palestinian civil police or armed escorts of aid, nor reiterated their previously reported “concern” over the policy.

On August 29th, the Israeli military assassinated four Palestinian aid delivery workers who accompanied a convoy organized by the U.S.-based NGO Anera. Again, the Israeli government cited the operational policy of targeting armed forces who assume control of the aid as justification for the strike. 

Fadi Zant, aged 9, experiencing malnutrition, received treatment after being evacuated from the northern Gaza Strip to Rafah, on March 24, 2024. Zant, who has cystic fibrosis, reportedly lost half of his body weight. He and his family were evacuated to Egypt and then to the U.S. Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images.

Devastating Effects

The results of the starvation policies in Gaza are no longer a matter of speculation. A study conducted by scholars from various Gaza universities, all of which have now been destroyed by the Israeli military, found the average Palestinian in the Strip has lost over 10 kilograms (or 22 pounds) in weight since October 7, 2023 and the number of underweight individuals has quadrupled. The Global Nutrition Cluster, which coordinates the activity of various NGOs combating malnutrition, assesses that over 50,000 children under the age of 5 require acute malnutrition treatment services.

“We know that this can have lifelong detrimental effects on children. Even a short period of malnutrition, let alone one that lasts a year,” said Dr. Yara Asi, co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. “Cognitive growth is slowed, so these children will perform worse in schools. They will be less able to participate in the economy. Physically stunted growth, which is when children do not grow at the normal pace, cannot be reversed.”

“Their bodies will be permanently stunted as a result of the malnutrition they experienced as children,” Asi continued. “There's likely other effects that we just have not been able to study. You'll find little surveys done from contexts around the world that look at this in the long term, but they almost all say we simply don't know enough to know how these children are going to grow up.”

As the U.S. was busy formulating the policies that brought about this outcome, it has simultaneously sought to help Israel construct a narrative that would help it carry on starving the population of Gaza unimpeded. “The images [seen] in America are brutal. There are enemies of Israel that are actively telling the story in a very negative way, and there are a lot of things that can be pointed to if that's the view you’re taking,” U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, told a crowd of Israeli academics in July. “Israel needs to tell the story that it is making sure that people are getting what they need for there not to be a famine.”

The State Department, meanwhile, continuously offered lip service to the suffering of Palestinians. When asked about the U.S.’s responsibility for the spread of starvation in Gaza, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller responded: “It is the United States that has secured all of the major agreements to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza going back to the very early days, the first week after October 7th, when the Secretary traveled to the region and the President traveled to Israel, and together convinced Israel to open Rafah crossing to allow humanitarian assistance in.”

In fact, Blinken and Biden’s visit resulted in the formulation of the Israeli policy of starvation as it stands today. “The United States, including Blinken and others, have legitimized this tactic,” said Asi. “Starvation as a weapon of war is okay as long as we agree with your aims.” That U.S.-approved policy was then implemented using U.S.-manufactured weapons, with the backing of U.S.-imposed sanctions, under the veil of a U.S.-constructed narrative.