U.S. Threatens Arms Suspension Despite Steady Gaza Aid Flow

Though Hamas’s October 7 attack and the subsequent war has undoubtedly produced considerable hardships for Palestinians in Gaza, U.S. claims, in a recent letter from the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense to the Israeli government, of a dire collapsing humanitarian situation in Gaza caused by Israeli indifference are categorically and provably false—including the claim that assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month in the war. In fact, Israel’s facilitation of massive quantities of aid into Gaza—including tens of millions of liters of fuel and hundreds of thousands of tons worth of food—is in many respects an unprecedented measure in wartime.

The fact that, after previous U.S. warnings of imminent humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza proved to be overblown, the United States would again accuse Israel of not providing enough aid and, moreover, threaten to cut off arms shipments will only embolden Israel’s adversaries at a critical juncture in the war, just days after Iran launched one of the largest ballistic missile attacks in history against Israel.

U.S. efforts to impose impossible standards of conduct on Israel and limitations on U.S. arms shipments to Israel will only prolong Israel’s operations against Hamas, draw out the conflict in Gaza, and undermine the two countries’ shared interest in defeating Iran’s terror proxies.      

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