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Is the West finally seeing sense on Gaza?

The Blinken-Austin letter could be a game-changer, or just another electoral gimmick

Middle EastWar ZonesHuman RightsUSA Politics

Aftermath of an Israeli bombing raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Photo courtesy the Palestinian News & Information Agency-WAFA/Wikimedia Commons.

In my most recent article for Canadian Dimension, I wrote about the stark discrepancies between US policy on supplying arms to Ukraine and Israel.

Though both states are nominally US allies, the Biden-Harris administration’s “unwavering support” for Ukraine has not stopped it from limiting or conditioning supplies of “offensive” as distinct from “defensive” weapons—long-distance ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching deep into Russia, for instance—in the interests of preventing escalation of the conflict and keeping European allies onside.

The US’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel, by contrast, has meant that the supply of offensive weaponry—like 500-pound and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of demolishing whole apartment blocks and incinerating their occupants—has continued to flow unimpeded, notwithstanding widespread international condemnation (including by several European states) of Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide in Gaza, or the Netanyahu government’s frequent breaches of what the US has itself described as “red lines.”

Until now. But a recent report by Axios suggests things may—may—be about to change.

Axios claims to have seen a letter sent on October 14 by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Minister of Defence Yoav Galant, which was first reported on Israel’s Channel 12.

If the Axios report is accurate, for the first time the US administration is explicitly threatening to suspend military aid to Israel unless some very specific conditions are met.

These conditions, says Axios, amount to “the most wide-ranging and comprehensive list of US demands from Israel since the beginning of the war.”

Noting that IDF evacuation orders have forced 1.7 million Palestinians into Mawasi, a narrow strip of land on the Gaza coast where they are prey to dangerous diseases, at the same time as recent Israeli policies have made it harder to supply international aid into Gaza and limited its movement within the Strip, Blinken and Austin wrote that:

The amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year … to reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory as consistent with its assurances to us, Israel must, starting now and within 30 days act on the following concrete measures …
Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for US policy under NSM-20 and relevant US law (weapons supply).


These “concrete measures” included demands that Israel must:

  • allow “the permanent transfer of 350 aid trucks daily to the Gaza Strip through all four current border crossings as well as the opening of a fifth border crossing”;
  • enable “humanitarian pauses [in the fighting] throughout Gaza to allow the distribution of aid for at least the next four months”;
  • permit “the Palestinians who are concentrated along the coast in Mawasi to move east inland and away from the coastal area before winter”;
  • “end the isolation of northern Gaza Strip and officially announce it has no policy of forced evacuation of Palestinians from northern Gaza Strip to the southern Gaza Strip”; and
  • “allow the Red Cross to visit Palestinian detainees in detention facilities in Israel as soon as possible, in light of reports of abuse of detainees.”

In addition, Blinken and Austin expressed the US administration’s “concern” about a bill currently before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, that would “sever ties between the Israeli government and UNRWA and to change the status-quo towards the organization in Jerusalem.”

Noting that this law, if passed, “would be devastating for the humanitarian effort in the Gaza Strip at a critical time and would prevent education and welfare services for tens of thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem” and could also “constitute a violation of US laws,” Blinken and Austin demanded that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exercise his powers and influence over Knesset members so the bill doesn’t pass.”

Finally, Blinken and Austin wrote, “the US wants to establish a new mechanism with Israel to discuss incidents of mass Palestinian civilian casualties during IDF operations.”

On reading this report my response was mixed. This could be a game-changer, not only for Gaza but for the rapidly escalating conflict that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East (if not eventually the world). Without US arms and diplomatic support at the United Nations for its defiance not only of UN Security Council resolutions but also the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, Israel becomes far more vulnerable not only militarily but to international pressure.

A change in US policy on arms at this point would also make domestic political sense. The presidential election is less than a month away, and the race is too close to call in the critical swing states.

While Kamala Harris has doubled down on Biden’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel’s defence, a threat to condition the supply of offensive weapons of the sort that has been the administration’s policy in Ukraine could win back some of the Palestinian American, Arab American, Muslim American, and young American votes the Democrats have lost over Gaza—because these groups have much to lose otherwise from a Trump victory.

If, that is, it is not too late. Remember Hubert Humphrey’s loss, in uncannily similar circumstances—cleaving too close to an unpopular president despite US involvement in a divisive war (Vietnam)—to Richard Nixon in 1968?

On the other hand, Biden has ignored his own red lines before, and Blinken has recently been exposed as flagrantly disregarding State Department advice back in April that Israel’s actions in Gaza were not in conformity with the very same legal requirements he is now invoking. The Blinken-Austin letter sets a 30-day deadline for Israel to act on its demands, which takes us to November 12—a week after the US election.

Should Harris, buoyed by the apparent prospect of a U-turn on Biden’s policy on arms to Israel, win on November 5, what is there to prevent her administration, having done its due diligence, from certifying that Israel’s assurances that it is acting in accord with relevant US laws are “credible and reliable,” as Blinken did—outrageously—before?

So long as the IDF continue to blockade aid, turn Jabalia refugee camp into a free-fire kill zone, fire on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, and burn hospital patients alive with US-supplied bombs, this is not a time to ease up on the pressure on Israel and the US to obey international law.

It is a time, on the contrary, for heightened vigilance.


Update

The full text of the Blinken-Austin letter has now been posted on X by the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid and its authenticity confirmed by the White House, whose spokesman Matthew Miller describes it as “a private diplomatic communication” whose “timing was not influenced by next month’s presidential election.” Sure.

The contents of the letter are as described by Axios, though there are some additional demands made of Israel that are not mentioned in the Axios report.

Derek Sayer is professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His most recent book, Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History, won the 2023 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Scholarship and was a finalist for the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in European History.

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