Former top Biden administration officials Jack Lew and David Satterfield reveal that “neither the IDF nor the UN ever shared evidence with us — or asserted to us privately — that Hamas was physically diverting US-funded goods provided by the World Food Programme or international nongovernmental organizations.”
“Furthermore, there was no evidence of substantial Hamas diversion of any major assistance funded by the UN or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),” write Lew, who served as US ambassador to Israel, and Satterfield, who served as US envoy for Mideast humanitarian issues, in a joint op-ed in Foreign Affairs.
Israel has insisted on the contrary and used the assertion of widespread, systemic Hamas theft of aid to justify the creation of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in May.
Israel has provided anecdotal evidence of footage showing gunmen who it claims are Hamas operatives commandeering aid trucks, but The New York Times cited two senior military officials last month who acknowledged that while Hamas is stealing some of the aid, there is no evidence to suggest that it is a systemic problem.
A June internal analysis produced by the US Agency for International Development reached the same conclusion. Political appointees at the State Department subsequently came out against the analysis after it was leaked to the press, but a source familiar with the matter tells the Haaretz daily that those individuals are relying on information provided to them by the Israelis.
Lew and Satterfield clarify that “Hamas did find ways to tax, extort, and to some extent divert aid, including assistance from Egypt handled by the Palestine Red Crescent Society,” echoing a point that Satterfield made in an interview with The Times of Israel last month.
For the first months of the war, Israel allowed Hamas police to secure convoys to prevent criminals from looting the trucks. But Israel eventually reached the conclusion that Hamas was using this role to hold onto its governance and began targeting the terror group’s operatives in January 2024, leading to the rise of criminal gangs and looters, Lew and Satterfield recall.
Israel initially preferred to rely on private contractors to secure convoys, but subsequently realized that these groups were also working with Hamas and the criminal gangs, leading to the termination of this arrangement.
Lew and Satterfield reveal that it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who asked US President Joe Biden to set up a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to help deliver more aid. The project to date had been seen as a wholly US endeavor.
While the former Biden officials credit the pier for having fed some 450,000 Gazans, it was widely seen as a highly costly failure after it broke apart several times and was forced to shut down completely after less than a month.
Still, Lew and Satterfield note that Israel had agreed to open the Ashdod Port to aid flow in exchange for the pier — a concession that remained in place well after the floating dock stopped operating.
The top Biden officials also recall how former defense minister Yoav Gallant proved as a critical conduit that the US relied on to expand the access of humanitarian aid into Gaza, overcoming opposition from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners.
Gallant helped convince the rest of the government to allow aid to come into Gaza directly from Israel through the Kerem Shalom Crossing in early 2024 after the US vetoed a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Lew and Satterfield argued that the administration’s close monitoring of the humanitarian situation at the highest levels helped stave off the mass starvation that aid groups now warn is taking shape in Gaza.
“Even Biden tracked the number of trucks daily,” the former US officials recall.
“In the meantime, there was a new administration in Washington that was far less involved in the details of aid delivery—and had begun dismantling the architecture of US assistance worldwide,” they add.
