US envoys to Israel blocked early warning of 'Apocalyptic Wasteland' in Gaza

Highlights:

• USAID warning of Palestinians' 'catastrophic human needs' withheld from senior US officials
• US envoys believed warnings lacked balance
• Humanitarian workers say their expertise was sidelined
• Joe Biden's backing for Israel deeply divided the Democratic party

US Agency for International Development staffers in early 2024 drafted a warning to senior officials in Joe Biden's administration: Northern Gaza had turned into an "Apocalyptic Wasteland" with dire shortages of food and medical aid.

Three months after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip, the internal message laid out in gruesome detail scenes observed by UN staff who visited the area on a two-part humanitarian fact-finding mission in January and February.

The staff reported seeing a human femur and other bones on the roads, dead bodies abandoned in cars and "catastrophic human needs, particularly for food and safe drinking water."

But the US ambassador to Jerusalem, Jack Lew, and his deputy, Stephanie Hallett, blocked the cable from wider distribution within the US government because they believed it lacked balance, according to interviews with four former officials and documents seen by Reuters.

Reuters is the first to report on the cable and why it was suppressed.

Hallett and Lew did not respond to requests for comment.

An official acknowledgement of the reality in Gaza

The February 2024 cable was one of five sent in the first part of that year documenting the rapidly deteriorating health, food and sanitary conditions and breakdown of social order for Palestinians living in Gaza resulting from Israel's military campaign, six former US officials told Reuters.

Reuters saw one of those cables. The other four, also blocked by Lew and Hallett because of their concerns about balance, were described by four former officials.

Three former US officials said that the descriptions were unusually graphic and would have commanded the attention of senior US officials had the message been widely circulated within Joe Biden's administration.

It would have also deepened scrutiny of a National Security Memorandum, issued by Biden that month, which conditioned the supply of US intelligence and weapons on Israel's compliance with international law, they said.

"While cables weren't the only means of providing humanitarian information ... they would have represented an acknowledgement by the ambassador of the reality of the situation in Gaza," said Andrew Hall, then a crisis operations specialist for USAID.

The US embassy in Jerusalem oversaw the language and distribution of most of the cables about Gaza, including those from other embassies in the region.

One former senior official said Lew and Hallett often told USAID leadership that the cables included information that had been widely reported in the media.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and representatives for former President Joe Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the fact that the cables never reached upper leadership of the US government.

The Gaza war started with the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,250 people. The death toll in Gaza now stands at over 71,000, according to Palestinian Health Ministry data.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, President Donald Trump announced his Gaza peace plan in the Oval Office last September, but the fighting has not stopped. Some 481 people have been killed since the ceasefire, according to Palestinian health ministry data.

The Biden administration's backing for Israel during the war deeply divided the Democratic Party and remains an unresolved issue for its political candidates.

More than 80% of Democrats believe that Israel's military response in Gaza has been excessive and that the United States should help people in the enclave who are facing starvation, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll last August.

Humanitarian expertise "sidelined"

As the cables were being drafted in early 2024, the White House and other senior US officials were broadly aware of the worsening humanitarian situation in northern Gaza from National Security Council reporting, four former officials said. And humanitarian organizations were warning of famine risks.

"There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it's got to stop," Biden told reporters at the White House in February 2024, describing Israel's response in Gaza as "over the top."

In January 2024, the embassy did approve the wider distribution of a cable about food insecurity throughout Gaza, and the information made it into the president's daily briefing – a compilation by the intelligence community of the most important national security information and analysis.

The cable, which was described to Reuters, looked at the risk of famine in northern Gaza and the potential for severe food insecurity in the rest of the strip because of a lack of food deliveries. It was one of the first detailed reports from USAID into the rapidly deteriorating situation inside Gaza, including growing food insecurity in the south of the enclave.

That cable caught the attention of several senior White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, who told colleagues he was surprised by how quickly the food situation had deteriorated, according to two of the former US officials.

Finer did not respond to a request for comment.

But senior US officials were not receiving regular first-hand accounts because of restricted access to the area during an intense battle between Israel and Hamas, six former US officials said.

"Simply put, humanitarian expertise was repeatedly sidelined, blocked, ignored," a former member of USAID's Middle East disaster response team said.

USAID cables seen as too sensitive

Until the USAID was reduced to a skeleton staff inside the State Department by the Trump administration, US officials relied heavily on the agency's reporting in situations where diplomatic presence and human intelligence were scarce.

Because USAID has had no staff inside Gaza since 2019, much of that reporting drew on information provided by UN agencies – including UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency - and international aid organizations funded by the US government.

That dependence on third parties contributed to some Biden officials' skepticism of USAID reporting, three former US officials told Reuters.

Biden's Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and his aides often asked in meetings if the USAID had verified the information and why it diverged, sometimes drastically, from Israel's version of events, the three former officials said. McGurk declined to comment.

In several instances, the former officials said White House officials pushed back on USAID analyses that suggested civilians were starving in Gaza.

The skepticism about the US government's humanitarian reporting stirred tensions inside the National Security Council and angered USAID officials working on the Gaza portfolio.

"The question was always like 'where are all the skinny kids?'" one of the former officials said.

The two former officials said Hallett sometimes asked for cables to be reframed or edited. She questioned the necessity of one cable, which focused on health, arguing that much of the information was in the public domain.

Two of the former Biden officials also said Hallett sometimes viewed USAID disaster team cables as too sensitive to be published during contentious negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage deal.

The February 2024 cable about northern Gaza drew on a fact-finding mission by UNRWA, the UN Mine Action Service, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, according to two former US officials and documents reviewed by Reuters.

The cable cleared USAID's West Bank and Gaza mission offices and the State Department's Office of Palestinian Affairs, before Hallett barred wider distribution, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. Cables only needed one sign-off from the head office of the embassy, and Hallett would not have barred its distribution without Lew's knowledge or approval, two former officials said.