Eurasia Press & News
A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the Gaza Strip. Since the March 2025 breakdown of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, conditions have worsened dramatically, and the potential for widespread starvation is real. Thousands of containers with food, medical supplies, and shelter materials remain stranded at border crossings on both sides, awaiting Israeli clearance to enter Gaza and conditions for safe passage free from seizure by desperate Gazan civilians, Hamas or gang attacks within the enclave. At least several hundred truckloads of food aid must enter daily to avert a wider catastrophe.
Many parties bear responsibility for this crisis. First and foremost, Hamas launched a war with the brutal October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel; because Hamas fighters live and fight in civilian areas and in tunnels running underneath them, Hamas invited an Israeli response that would put millions of people at risk. Gazan civilians have suffered hardships and deaths at an unfathomable scale since the start of the war, and outside organizations attempting to meet humanitarian needs are struggling to deliver aid in the midst of intense combat and disorder in a dense urban environment.
From the very beginning, U.S. President Joe Biden was steadfast in his support of Israel’s right to defend itself in Gaza and defeat Hamas as a military threat. But his administration, in which we both served, also made clear that Israel was responsible for exercising care to limit civilian harm and to ensure access to food, medical care, and shelter. As the U.S. ambassador to Israel (Lew) and as the U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues (Satterfield), we communicated these dual positions in our daily engagements with Israeli leaders at all levels. And we pressed all parties to coordinate so that enough lifesaving supplies reached Gaza, even if inconsistently.
There was still too much scarcity and precarity, and for months following the October 2023 attacks on Israel, some commentators labeled the situation in Gaza a famine. But although the results of our work never satisfied us, much less our critics, in reality the efforts we led in the Biden administration to keep Gaza open for humanitarian relief prevented famine. The fact remains that through the first year and a half of relentless war, Gazans did not face mass starvation because humanitarian assistance was reaching them.
During our tenure, the United States deployed officials from multiple agencies that had the tools, leverage, and determination to improve the situation, and we were committed to doing so despite the often adverse circumstances. In March, when the cease-fire broke down, everything changed.
Under the terms of the cease-fire, which was struck in the last days of the Biden administration in January 2025, Israel had allowed a surge of supplies into Gaza. But when the cease-fire collapsed, Israel closed all humanitarian access in an effort to pressure Hamas to agree to the terms of a hostage deal. It was the first time it had blocked all aid to Gaza since late October 2023. The total blockade continued for 11 weeks, and during this critical time, the Trump administration stood back as remaining food supplies diminished and suffering increased, until it became clear to the president that the crisis had grown to politically unacceptable levels and was triggering outrage even in the MAGA base.
Then, when Israel finally did allow a limited amount of aid to enter, it changed the primary food distribution model, mostly bypassing the United Nations and other established humanitarian organizations in favor of a brand-new operation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Although the UN continued to operate, it experienced significant operational difficulties and restrictions. The nearly 20,000 tons of monthly food aid that got through from March to July was about a third of what the World Food Program deemed necessary. The scenes of acute hunger and potential starvation that have emerged from Gaza in recent weeks reveal a frightening deterioration.
When aid was flowing before the cease-fire, it did not arrive by chance. It came one border crossing and one truck convoy at a time, and it required overcoming political and battlefield challenges every step of the way. As the world watches the crisis unfolding today and demands a solution, it is important to learn from what worked and what did not, and to remember that it falls to all parties to find a solution. The stakes are too high to allow the delivery of critical assistance to be derailed by Israeli political dynamics, obstruction by Hamas or armed Gazan gangs, or infighting among aid providers. And Washington must remember that it uniquely has the tools and leverage to avert an escalating catastrophe.
UNDER PRESSURE
After the October 7 attacks, the people of Israel were in shock, traumatized both by Hamas’s brutality and by the failure of their government to protect their fellow citizens. Immediately following the attacks, Israel responded forcefully, imposing a complete blockade on Gaza that prevented any humanitarian aid from entering via land routes. The Israeli cabinet decided that, as a matter of policy, there would be no commercial or civilian contact between Israel and Gaza. In those early days, it was common to hear Israelis use the phrase “not a drop of water, not a drop of milk, and not a drop of fuel will go from Israel to Gaza.” In the raw trauma after October 7, this sentiment was understandable but unsustainable with growing needs.
From the beginning, U.S. officials made clear that Israeli leaders needed to find a way for lifesaving supplies to get in. We underscored that doing so was unquestionably a moral obligation. We also argued that it was a strategic necessity, in that it would give Israel the time to plan and accomplish its military mission of eliminating Hamas as a threat while maintaining the support it needed from its allies, in particular the United States.
On October 18, 2023, Biden visited Israel to demonstrate U.S. solidarity in the aftermath of the attacks but also to persuade the government to allow trucks to cross into the Gazan city of Rafah from Egypt. He told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet privately—and then the Israeli people publicly—that the United States “had Israel’s back” and that Israel had not just a right but also an obligation to ensure that Hamas could never again act as it did on October 7. But Biden also emphasized that the military campaign against Hamas would be complex and warned explicitly that the ability of the United States to support the operation would depend on Israel’s initiating and sustaining an effective “humanitarian campaign.” Without such a campaign, the president stressed, Israel would have neither the time nor the space it needed to accomplish its military goals.
The efforts we led in the Biden administration prevented famine in Gaza.At the time, Israel’s wounds were raw, and its focus was on defending against further attacks. Its government needed to work to meet humanitarian needs in Gaza while Hamas kept hostages in captivity and was still showering Israel with rockets. Under any circumstances, it would have taken determined leadership to explain to the public why it was the responsibility of their government to make sure that humanitarian needs were met on the ground in Gaza. But it was even harder given the political dynamics of Israel’s governing coalition. Netanyahu’s coalition includes far-right parties that held what were then fringe views. The goals of the right-wing parties did not stop at defeating Hamas. They believed that Israel should never have disengaged unilaterally from Gaza and removed Israeli civilian settlements in September 2005 and that Israelis should resettle the territory after the war. This was not the position of the government, but far right-wing parties threatened to bring down the coalition if the cabinet made decisions they opposed, including opening routes for humanitarian assistance.
While some on the right opposed humanitarian assistance, others in the Israeli government chafed when we in the administration reminded them that Israel had both a right to defend itself and an obligation and a strategic imperative to ensure that aid could reach Gazans. They took umbrage at the notion that U.S. pressure was needed to persuade them to provide humanitarian assistance. Given the tensions within the government, it took active and consistent U.S. engagement to manage the internal Israeli political dynamics and maintain the adequate flow of assistance. The message to our interlocutors in the Israeli government was in essence, “If the politics are hard, blame the United States.” Allowing Netanyahu to cite a need to satisfy U.S. demands was crucial then—and remains crucial today. Because Biden never wavered in his commitment to Israel’s defense, we had the space to urge its government to meet growing humanitarian needs.
Immediately after Biden’s visit, Israel agreed to open the Rafah crossing for aid deliveries from Egypt. At first, just 20 trucks a day entered Gaza through Rafah—far from enough to meet humanitarian needs. Part of the challenge was that the Rafah crossing was designed for pedestrians and cars, not large truck convoys, making it inadequate in view of the extent of the demand and the logistical difficulties. But Israel also placed limits on the types of goods and the number of trucks (around 75 per day) permitted to go through Rafah. And to comply with the Israeli government’s decision not to allow any direct movement of assistance into Gaza from Israel, trucks had to be inspected at an Israeli-Egyptian border crossing before proceeding to Rafah—which caused significant delays.
AN OPENING
Watching this, we knew we needed to find ways to increase the volume of aid. U.S. cabinet members and other senior officials were making frequent visits to Israel to consult on the unfolding military operations and to repeat the message that more humanitarian aid was necessary. In November 2023, a one-on-one conversation between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Netanyahu scheduled for only a few minutes stretched to over an hour. As Israel’s war cabinet and the rest of the U.S. delegation waited for Blinken and Netanyahu to conclude the meeting, we began informal discussions, including with Yoav Gallant, who was then defense minister and had declared immediately after the October 7 attacks that no aid would move from Israel to Gaza. By this point, however, he understood that Israel had to allow more humanitarian assistance into the enclave—and he had an idea about how to do it.
Gallant walked the two of us through the complex geography of the southern border crossing between Israel and Gaza at Kerem Shalom. He explained that a truck could back up in Israel and be unloaded in Gaza without technically crossing the border, and that observation towers in Israel could provide full visibility to monitor threats against such an operation. Although this plan was a bit nebulous, it offered a road map to increase entry points beyond Rafah—and to chip away at the broad Israeli prohibition against moving aid directly from Israel to Gaza.
In early December, with the international support that had swelled for Israel immediately after October 7 beginning to wane, we saw an opening to put the plan into motion. UN Secretary-General António Guterres was prepared to use a very rarely invoked authority, Article 99 of the UN Charter, to force the Security Council to vote on a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. Washington needed to show the international community that Israel was taking steps to meet humanitarian needs. The White House and State Department debated whether to have Biden call Netanyahu to demand the opening of Kerem Shalom, but our sense was that the pressure would more likely succeed if it came from within Israel’s own cabinet. We asked Washington to give us a few days to work through the Defense Ministry.
We knew we needed to find ways to increase the volume of aid. More than anyone else in government, Defense Ministry officials understood the vital importance of American supply lines and strategic and defensive capabilities to Israel’s war effort. And as he had told us a few weeks earlier, Gallant was prepared to defend the position that opening Kerem Shalom could be reconciled with the official policy of no direct civilian contact between Israel and Gaza. In private, he acknowledged that civilians needed more access to essential items, and he understood the strategic importance of maintaining broad support for Israel, at least in the United States.
In a phone call in the middle of the night, one of us (Lew) put it very directly to the defense minister: “You know this is the right thing to do, and in a few days the United States will be the only country in the world prepared to block a UN Security Council resolution that hurts Israel. You need to help us and act now to open Kerem Shalom.” He said he would make that case.
The United States vetoed the UN resolution on December 8 on the grounds that it did not condemn the October 7 attack and that an immediate cease-fire would allow Hamas to retain its military power and “only plant the seeds for the next war.” On December 12, the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, visited Israel with the same message that we had delivered. On December 15, Israel announced it would open the crossing at Kerem Shalom.
Over the next several months, similar U.S. engagement, typically with Gallant playing a key role, persuaded Israel to open a series of additional crossings into Gaza. Each opening—Gate 96 in March, Erez and Zikim (Erez West) in April and May, and Kissufim in November 2024—required arduous diplomacy, including very blunt messaging to Netanyahu from Biden in April 2024 after an Israeli attack on World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers. Israeli hard-liners resisted every time, among them protesters who blocked aid trucks, which prompted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to intervene. After each decision to open a crossing, it was a struggle to counter potential violence by far-right groups and overcome logistical snafus and bureaucratic obstacles. And on the other side of each opening were desperate civilians, criminal gangs, and an ever-present Hamas.
SIDELINING THE SPOILERS
Throughout this period, it was evident that Hamas wanted to control aid distribution to benefit its own fighters and tighten its grip on Gaza. At first, Israel tolerated this, and for a while it even refrained from attacking Hamas police officers who, in their blue cars, accompanied convoys to prevent violent tribal gangs and criminal elements from interfering with the distribution of aid. Eventually, however, Israel came to see this as allowing Hamas to strengthen its hold on governance, and in January 2024 the IDF began targeting the blue cars. With Hamas sidelined during the delivery process, the criminal gangs and looters came out in full force.
To be clear, Hamas did find ways to tax, extort, and to some extent divert aid, including assistance from Egypt handled by the Palestine Red Crescent Society. But until January 20, 2025, neither the IDF nor the UN ever shared evidence with us—or asserted to us privately—that Hamas was physically diverting U.S.-funded goods provided by the World Food Program 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).
Theft and diversion of UN assistance was primarily the work of criminal gangs, and we engaged with Israel and the UN to take steps to mitigate the risks. Israel’s solution was to turn to private contractors to secure the convoys, until it later concluded that the contractors were assisting the gangs and Hamas. At this point, maintaining orderly movement and distribution inside Gaza became even harder.
By February 2024, the situation in northern Gaza prompted Netanyahu to ask Biden to arrange for the U.S. military to build a floating pier to deliver aid directly to Gaza from the sea. The pier would offer quicker access to deliver aid to civilians in and around Gaza City and allow access to both the north and south along more protected routes, in theory avoiding looting and easing the passage of convoys through the IDF-controlled Netzarim Corridor checkpoint. By that point, Biden had been exploring the idea of the pier for weeks, wrestling with both the temporary nature and high cost of a maritime delivery option. He authorized the pier in the conviction that despite these drawbacks, the United States needed to employ all means possible to address the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation. He had another goal as well: Washington agreed to this plan on the condition that the Israelis would also allow the port of Ashdod to receive U.S. wheat deliveries destined for Gaza and that two more land crossings from Israel would open into northern Gaza. (Israel also provided significant construction assistance and perimeter security for the pier and paused some of its military operations to allow the pier to function.)
Rough waters ultimately made it impossible to sustain the pier, which broke apart a number of times and was shut down after less than a month of operation. While it was functioning, however, the pier managed to feed approximately 450,000 people. And even after the pier was removed from service, Israel kept Ashdod and the two northern crossings open. By April 2024, at our urging, it had also opened Ashdod to all humanitarian cargo, not just wheat.
Such U.S. efforts saved lives in Gaza. Many of us in the Biden administration asked one essential question every single day: How many trucks got in? This was an imperfect measure, as it did not reveal how the aid got distributed or who received it. But it was a simple, measurable, and important bellwether. Even Biden tracked the number of trucks daily. We knew by December 2023 that if fewer than about 250 trucks entered daily, the distribution system might be overwhelmed once more by desperate Gazans. We believed that Gaza needed closer to 350 or 400. Although not all the trucks were the same—some carried far less food and other aid than others—every truck counted. Every open gate mattered.
WHAT CHANGED?
Between the U.S. presidential election in November 2024 and the transition to a new administration in January 2025, the Biden and Trump teams worked hand in hand to reach a cease-fire and hostage-release agreement. When the deal was done, 33 hostages were freed, and over 600 trucks per day began to enter Gaza. With food reserves building up, the humanitarian situation appeared to improve significantly. And contrary to concerns that Israel might never allow Gazan civilians to return to their homes, hundreds of thousands returned to the northern part of Gaza—a Hamas demand that was key to getting the hostages returned.
From there, the cease-fire agreement was designed to unfold in stages. Further negotiations to release all the hostages in exchange for a permanent cease-fire were meant to begin as the first stage was being implemented. But those end-stage negotiations never came to fruition. And 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 U.S. assistance worldwide.
In February, President Donald Trump dropped a rhetorical bomb: he suggested that all of Gaza’s residents be relocated while the United States reconstructed the territory. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” he declared in a joint press conference with Netanyahu, outlining his vision of a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Of course, no one had asked the people of Gaza whether they wanted to leave, or other countries whether they were prepared to absorb two million refugees. At the news conference, Netanyahu seemed startled by Trump’s comments. He avoided embracing or rejecting the goal, instead hailing the president’s “bold vision” on Gaza. Yet it quickly became clear that Trump’s remark had delighted Israelis on the far right and handed them more of a claim of political legitimacy and leverage within the cabinet than they could ever have imagined. In minutes, the fringe idea of forced mass resettlement—pragmatically unattainable, morally unconscionable, and legally unacceptable—had been legitimized by no less an authority than the American president.
Hamas wanted to control aid distribution. Israel halted all entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in the first week of March, after the breakdown of cease-fire negotiations. The prime minister declared to the Israeli cabinet and the nation that “no assistance would be allowed to go to Hamas.” This was a pivotal decision. It reflected a genuine concern that aid was being diverted by Hamas—even though the alleged scale of that diversion was not substantiated—but also the premise that depriving Gaza of food would pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages and surrender its arms. As food reserves diminished, the consequence was a new and unparalleled humanitarian crisis: for the first time, malnutrition showed signs of becoming widespread.
Under pressure as photographs started coming out—notably from Trump and the IDF—the Israeli government had to act. In an effort to square the circle within the cabinet between the declaration that “no assistance” would go to Hamas and the demands that humanitarian relief resume, Israel abandoned the system of aid provision that had existed before the cease-fire broke down. Instead, it turned in May to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new U.S.- and Swiss-based NGO backed by Israel and the United States.
In its original conception, which came as part of a negotiation between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the GHF was meant to operate in a postwar Gaza in which international forces would maintain security, and governance would come from a transitional administration with Palestinian and international participation; aid was to be distributed to civilians directly in secure zones. Instead, the GHF operation started under very different wartime conditions. It established distribution points in a handful of IDF-controlled areas in the south and center of Gaza, giving it, by its own acknowledgment, the ability to distribute just some 20 percent of the total food aid needed by the territory’s population. With growing desperation from civilians and reports of fatalities in crowd control efforts by the surrounding IDF units (as well as private military contractors hired to assist with distribution), the GHF launch has been plagued by problems. Scores of civilians in search of aid have been killed or injured both by stampedes and by live fire from some combination of the IDF, Hamas, and criminal gangs.
NO SILVER BULLET
Speaking last week, Trump acknowledged the inhumanity of the situation and the reality of starvation. But it takes sustained engagement at the highest level, not just a casual remark from the Oval Office or a social media post, to ensure that Israel keeps multiple crossings open so that hundreds of trucks can enter Gaza every day. And as we learned, the massive humanitarian need for assistance can be met only if all parties find a way to work together.
The steps needed to right the situation are clear.
First, Israel must not treat humanitarian aid as a coercive means to pressure Hamas. This tactic risks civilian lives in Gaza and subjects Israel to international condemnation and isolation. Israel must keep land crossings open and ensure that its use of force adheres to rules of engagement that protect civilians. This means more training, more accountability for civilian casualties, and better coordination with aid providers.
Second, all aid providers and facilitators need to work together. In this fractured, heavily militarized landscape, aid must flow through multiple, imperfect channels. Israel has good reason to want to prevent Hamas from deriving any benefit from international aid. Conversely, UN agencies and most international aid organizations refuse to work with any organization they deem militarized and connected to a party to the conflict, and that includes the GHF. The reality, however, is that the GHF is now the main channel for bringing in food.
By its own admission, the GHF cannot be a substitute for the UN and other international agencies or meet the full needs of Gazans. Nor is it designed or staffed to distribute specialized nutrition to the most vulnerable—children, women, and the elderly. At the same time, the established UN model for aid distribution is struggling to reach people, as its convoys are being swarmed and attacked by a combination of desperate civilians, gangs, and Hamas. The UN and the IDF—through sustained operational coordination and deconfliction—must make every possible effort to “flood the zone” in a way that discourages attempts by civilians to “self-distribute” and reduces the incentive for criminal looting. Yet because of the disorder and outright chaos engulfing the convoys, the UN is struggling to reach the most vulnerable in Gaza.
Israel must not treat humanitarian aid as a coercive means to pressure Hamas.Given this situation, the UN, the GHF, and other aid providers need to coordinate with one another and with the IDF—even if this requires flexibility on deeply held positions. This means bringing in and distributing assistance to all populations in need throughout Gaza, through all available means. With this as the essential guiding principle, the UN needs to accept security from the IDF, the GHF, or its own contractors. Rather than trying to sideline the GHF, the UN should work with it or at a minimum parallel to it. And the GHF needs to be open to learning from the UN, with its deep knowledge of operating in Gaza and of how professionals structure humanitarian assistance. Fragmentation and institutional bickering will not help the situation. Alleviating the acute suffering of Gazans must come first, even if that means working with or beside actors one does not agree with and in conditions one does not fully control and would not choose.
Third, Washington needs to lead. In May, Trump played a key role in getting the GHF launched and provided it with some U.S. funding. Israel has in recent days expanded the flow of assistance into Gaza by the GHF and the UN. But without assistance at scale, too little aid is getting to people in need. This cannot be a one-time engagement by the White House. The pressure must be consistent and accompanied by sustained attention from senior U.S. officials. Far too many Gazans have died in this war. Getting aid through, however messily and imperfectly, can help save thousands more who might otherwise perish. But it will take American leadership and coordination to make that happen.
Finally, and most important, Hamas must free the hostages so this war can end. As recognized by Israel’s military leaders more than a year ago, to have a future free from Hamas after the war ends, there needs to be a plan for non-Hamas governance. Hamas started a war in full knowledge that it was putting its own civilians at risk, and it is now threatening aid providers and recipients. Egypt, Qatar, and other governments with influence must press Hamas and the gangs to free the hostages, lay down their arms, and end their predatory behavior, which is playing a major role in creating mass hunger.
Humanitarian assistance—not just food but also water, shelter and medical care that meets the needs of all Gazans—can and must get back on track.
