How Former Biden Officials Defend Their Gaza Policy

During the war in Gaza, there have been two major stages of aid delivery to Palestinians: the original effort led largely by the United Nations, which involved hundreds of facilities, and the current system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American nonprofit set up with Israeli backing. Last March, after Israel ended a ceasefire with Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government imposed a near-total aid cutoff to the territory until well into May, at which point the G.H.F. took over. The U.N.’s food deliveries had not been able to meet the overwhelming need in Gaza, but at least they had taken place all over the territory. The G.H.F. opened only four sites. Hundreds of Palestinians have been shot amid the chaos there. Since July 1st, two hundred and four people have died of malnutrition. (The total Palestinian death toll for the war is now more than sixty-two thousand.) Even President Donald Trump acknowledged the starvation. In response, Netanyahu allowed more aid into the territory, and Mike Huckabee, Trump’s Ambassador to Israel, announced that the G.H.F. would create more aid-distribution sites. But Gazans continue to starve, and Netanyahu has said that he plans to expand the war and occupy Gaza City. In Israel, this has spurred protests against his government, and families of the remaining hostages held by Hamas—there are believed to be about twenty still alive—argue that he is continuing the war for political reasons.

In a recent piece in Foreign Affairs, titled “How to Stop a Humanitarian Catastrophe,” the former Biden Administration officials Jacob J. Lew and David Satterfield explain why they believe that the Trump Administration is failing where theirs succeeded. Lew became Ambassador to Israel less than a month after October 7th, and Satterfield was Biden’s special envoy for humanitarian issues in the region. In the piece, they write, “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.”

I recently spoke by phone with Lew, who served in the second Obama Administration as Treasury Secretary, and is currently a professor of international public affairs at Columbia University, about the piece, as well as the broader American-Israeli relationship. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed whether the Biden Administration was trying to keep Netanyahu in power, how much it shaped Israeli conduct, and what Lew learned on late-night phone calls with Israeli officials.

You write in the piece that the Biden Administration prevented mass starvation in Gaza while it remained in office. What did you do to prevent mass starvation?

From the very beginning of the war, President Biden was unequivocal in saying he had Israel’s back, and he would continue to support Israel and its legitimate effort to defeat Hamas. But there had to be a very serious effort to deal with the civilian issues of a war in Gaza. So we engaged literally every day and night on the questions of how you have an effective strategy of providing aid in a war zone. And we worked very hard to bring the attention of Israeli leaders to the urgency of opening aid crossings. So it was not a one-day event. Literally the entire time I was there, it was a very substantial part of the work that we were doing.

During your tenure, humanitarian groups, the United Nations, and even people in the Biden Administration were constantly saying that there was not enough aid getting into Gaza. The death toll climbed to more than forty-six thousand before you left office. I know you’re not saying that the aid-delivery system was sufficient, but how would you characterize it?

At every point, we said more needed to be done. I’m not saying that we achieved the goal of getting enough food in to meet all needs. But that’s a very, very different reality than mass malnutrition and famine. And every time there were reports of famine that were not accurate, it made it harder to do the job of getting more aid in. We were trying to make the critique in a balanced way to keep pressure on Hamas—and to not abandon Israel’s just effort to defeat an enemy that attacked it on October 7th, killing twelve hundred people—while still saying that you have an obligation every day, even if it’s at some risk, to keep the aid crossings open to Gaza. It was arduous work.

The risk of strengthening Hamas, if Hamas got hold of the fuel or the food, was a serious question. It wasn’t a made-up concern. We never saw it going directly from what the United States was providing. So I want to be clear on that. But they undoubtedly were trying to control the administration of aid because it was a way of holding on to governance.

But I just want to be clear: people were starving to death in 2src24. I know mass starvation did not happen, but people were dying, correct?

I can tell you that we did not see evidence of mass starvation leading to death. We did see children, and some of them were children with diseases who are particularly susceptible, and it’s tragic. Any civilian, any child dying of malnutrition is tragic. So I’m in no way saying there weren’t problems. Until March of 2src25, it wasn’t great, but people were surviving. And it was not an accident. It took constant engagement to keep that flow. I would never say there was no problem. I think the reports of famine were premature and exaggerated. Even in my last month, there was a report that I found extremely troubling where it said there was a serious risk of famine in the north, literally as we were working day and night to open the routes for food to get in to the people who were still in that very northern part of Gaza.

It seems that part of what was going on with what you said were “premature” warnings of famine was that humanitarian groups would warn of famine and then once things got bad enough, Israel would increase the amount of aid coming in. Doesn’t what you are saying suggest that, too? You are saying you would pressure the Israelis and therefore they would open the tap a little bit more and things would get a little bit better. And that’s not happening as much in the Trump Administration, so the starvation has gotten worse.

Well, look, when I got to Israel in November of 2src23, the country was shell-shocked. It was in a state of trauma from October 7th that any of us in New York on September 11th would understand in a very visceral way. So people were not making decisions based on long-term thinking. I would say that once we got into November, we had engagement with senior policymakers who understood that there was a need to address humanitarian concerns. The challenge was that it was a country that didn’t understand exactly the scope of the humanitarian needs, and there was a right-wing element of Netanyahu’s coalition government that was opposed and had other views that were threatening to bring down the coalition. How did you get decisions to be taken without causing the government to collapse? Now, people have asked, why did we care about that? Because you work with the government that you have. We don’t vote in the elections in other countries. We don’t choose the leaders.

But supporting the government in power is a little different than saying we’re going to help this government try to survive.

We didn’t do that, Isaac. We never took a position one way or another on what the government should be. There were people in the government who thought we wanted it to fall. There were people outside of the government who thought we weren’t doing enough. We work to make policy with the government that’s in place.

In the essay, you write, “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.” That makes it seem like you were trying to help the current government stay in power.

No, I think you’re missing the point. The point I’m making is if your goal is to keep humanitarian aid flowing and you see obstacles that have to be overcome, you have to be realistic about what it takes to achieve the goal that you have. Our goal was to get the aid in. We wanted Israel to prevail in the war. What we’re saying in the essay is realistically there were limitations on how decisions would be taken and the coalition was concerned about not falling. It was their concern, not ours. I take issue with the characterization of our position being that we were trying to defend the coalition when we were trying to solve the immediate, urgent issue, which was getting humanitarian assistance in.

So when you say that, “Allowing Netanyahu to cite a need to satisfy U.S. demands was crucial then—and remains crucial today,” what do you mean? Netanyahu doesn’t want to piss off the super far-right ministers in his government by having it seem that Israel is delivering aid. So you’re saying that allowing Netanyahu to cite the need to satisfy U.S. demands is crucial to him remaining in power, correct?