Gaza’s Intensifying Humanitarian Catastrophe: Expert Perspectives

Event Transcript

Note: this is a rush transcript and may contain errors.

Katherine Wilkens: Welcome to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I’m Katherine Wilkens, a non-resident fellow in the Carnegie Middle East program. Today’s discussion is on the intensifying humanitarian crisis in Gaza where some 2 million people, 50% of them children, have been concentrated for months in abysmal circumstances with minimal access to food, water, and sanitary conditions. Our primary purpose today is to discuss the factors contributing to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis and what steps can be taken to alleviate the suffering and prevent a catastrophic further loss of life.

Before I introduce our panel, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the upcoming solemn one-year mark of the horrendous October 7th Hamas attack on Southern Israel, and to remember all the lives lost that awful day and all the civilians lives lost and brutally transformed since that day by this horrendous war, including the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza and the Palestinian civilians still being held in Israel.

Of course, the best way to begin to relieve the immense human suffering would be to achieve a ceasefire and return of all the hostages. Unfortunately, that goal has been painfully elusive. And after months of talks, an agreement does not appear likely in the near term. At the same time as the bombing and shelling and Gaza grinds on, the intensifying conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now dominating the headlines, and there’s a real danger that the media and others look away from the crisis in Gaza, or even for some believe the situation is improving. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today we will focus on how dire the situation has become, what measures must be taken immediately in the absence of a ceasefire to reverse the worsening trend, and who must do what in order to implement those life-saving measures.

With us to discuss these issues and more, we have three highly respected experts. Ambassador David Satterfield is currently the director of the James A. Baker Institute at Rice University, following a long and distinguished career in the US Foreign Service that took him to senior posts across the Middle East for over four decades. On October 15th, 2023, he was appointed by President Biden to serve as US Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian issues, a post he held until May, and where he was in the center of efforts to try to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza following the Hamas attack and the start of the war.

Jeremy Konyndyk is president of Refugees International, an independent humanitarian organization that promotes solutions to displacement crises around the world. He has worked extensively in the humanitarian NGO sector and has served in senior US Government posts with USAID, including director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Two weeks ago, Refugees International released its new report, Untangling the Reality of Famine in Gaza, which closely examines the trajectory of hunger and the factors influencing Gaza’s hunger crisis from January 2024 until May of this year.

Scott Anderson is the deputy humanitarian coordinator and director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza. He’s a seasoned professional in emergency operations and logistics with more than 30 years of experience in the field in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, with both United Nations and as an officer and soldier in the United States Army. We are particularly indebted to Scott for taking the time to join us today from Gaza.

Following our discussion, we will have a live Q&A session where you can pose questions to our panellists. Now, I’d like to start discussion with you, Jeremy. Can you review the findings of your report?

Jeremy Konyndyk: Sure thing. Thank you, Katherine. A pleasure to be here and really honored to be on with David and Scott as well. So we put out this report a few weeks ago, as you said, and it explores the trajectory of food insecurity and famine risk in Gaza. We put this out now for a few reasons. One, the risk is not over. We’re not hearing as much, there’s not as much news coverage of humanitarian conditions in Gaza. It’s being pushed aside by most recently, some of the situation in Lebanon, but the humanitarian crisis remains very real and I’m sure Scott will say more about that. It has also been the subject of a lot of contentious debate about the reality of what’s going on, is the humanitarian situation in fact as severe as, as some have said, the Israeli Government has pushed back quite hard at times, disputing famine risk, disputing the severity of the humanitarian situation.

This has also been a really central part of both US policy and global diplomacy around the situation. So when the UK suspended arms shipments recently, part of the rationale that they cited was the severity of the humanitarian situation that is also at the center of the ICJ and ICC cases. So kind of getting to the reality of what is happening and what has happened over the course of now nearly a year of war is really fundamental beyond just obviously the severity of human need itself.

So we looked at this in a few different phases. We broke it down into four phases of what had happened, and one of the key questions we wanted to explore is what happened following the March projections of imminent famine, which I think it’s fair to say, have not come to pass. It’s not to say the situation is good, but the kind of mass population level famine that was being predicted in the March UN IPC projections, we haven’t seen that emerge entirely. And so we dug into what had happened and broke it down into four phases. The first phase set the table for famine, and that was the first several months of the war, from the immediate aftermath of October 7th through about the end of the year.

And in this phase, it started off of course with what Defense Minister Golan characterized as a complete siege on Gaza, a complete cutoff of all food, fuel, and other forms of aid and commercial activity into Gaza. That sort of was incrementally relaxed bit by bit, step by step over the next few months, but you’re not going back to a full and open situation, just kind of modest concessions over several months by the Israeli Government, which continued to greatly restrict the flow of both aid and commercial activity into Gaza.

And so by the time we got to late December, the first IPC projections were issued and those identified a risk of famine, and that was really built on the food deficit that had built up in Gaza over that period. At one point in November, the World Food Programme had assessed that only about 10% of Gaza’s total food consumption needs were actually entering the territory during that period. And for a territory that produces very little of its own food and is heavily dependent on imports to feed itself, that was a critical situation.

Normally, when you see the IPC put out a report projecting possible famine, there is then an immediate international reaction. We would expect to see food aid ramp up, other forms of aid wrap up, concerted diplomacy around access. Instead, what we saw going into January and February was very little change, and in fact some further deterioration in access. And so it got so bad during that period, particularly in Northern Gaza, that Samantha Power, the USAID administrator, went out in late February, stood on the border with Gaza and called on the Israeli Government to do more to open more crossings and facilitate more aid inflows.

And there was a lot of activity behind the scenes at this time, and I’m sure David will have a lot to say about that. He was leading a lot of those efforts, but the Israeli Government was not doing nearly enough to respond to that. And so one of the things that Administrator Power called for was opening crossings into the North. Those were not opened until much, much later. And so during this period, conditions in the North deteriorated really markedly because it was cut off along the Northern edge, the Israeli Government would not open the border crossings directly into Northern Gaza, and it was nearly impossible in this period to move aid from Southern and Middle Gaza up into Northern Gaza because of the Israeli line of control across the center.

There were also a number of attacks on aid agencies during this time, including one I think really gratuitous attack on a UN convoy that was moving along an IDF-approved route, was stopped at an IDF checkpoint and being held there not posing any threat, and then was shelled by a different IDF unit from the sea. So that really I think showed the UN that even when they had these assurances of safe movement, that was not reliable.

And so by the time you get to March, the situation in Northern Gaza is really critical. And through our interviews, we heard firsthand accounts from Palestinians of telltale famine indicators emerging in Northern Gaza during this period, things like people selling off all of their assets in order to scrape together a little bit of money to try and purchase food, women selling sex in order to do that as well. Substituting food products for... So rather substituting things that are not food for food, so eating animal feed, eating weeds and local weeds and grasses that are not normally for human consumption. A range of things like this, and we document some of that in our report, that is not dispositive of famine conditions, but it is very consistent with the sort of behaviors you’d expect to see when famine conditions are emerging.

And so we assess in the report that it’s very plausible that parts of Northern Gaza fell into famine, certainly at a household level and perhaps at a community level in the north during that kind of January, February, early March period. And then the IPC comes out with the projection of imminent famine in March, in late March. And so we were primed, I think a lot of the humanitarian community was primed for it to get a lot worse. And then it didn’t. And so we explore in the report why that is. And I think what’s really important to look at is a period of about two weeks in the second half of March where you have the IPC report come out. There is not long after that, ICJ order calling on the Israeli Government to allow it to do much more facilitate humanitarian aid.

And then you have the very now infamous strike on World Central Kitchen that killed seven aid workers and prompted a really furious global reaction. And I think the confluence of those events, particularly capped off by the World Central Kitchen strike, puts a huge amount of pressure on the Israeli Government. And there is a phone call between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu in the aftermath of that strike, which is probably the most forceful, at least reportedly, that President Biden was with Prime Minister Netanyahu. And he demands that he take a number of actions. Immediately out of that phone call, there is opening of the Northern border crossings and food begins to flow into the North. There is also a period then of a couple months up to the Rafah invasion where more is getting into Southern and middle Gaza as well. And the situation kind of levels out.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you.

Jeremy Konyndyk: I’ll pause there, but that’s our best understanding.

Katherine Wilkens: Yeah, you’ve laid it out very well.

Jeremy Konyndyk: It was the Israeli concessions on access that did in fact stabilize the situation.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you. You’ve laid it out well for Scott to pick it up. Scott, we want to move to the next phase and how things changed. And I’m going to quote first from UNICEF executive director, Catherine Russell, who said recently, "Simply put, we do not have the necessary conditions in the Gaza Strip for robust humanitarian response. The flow of aid must be unimpeded and access must be regular and safe." Can you talk about the changes that we need?

Scott Anderson: Sure. And thank you, it’s great to be here with everyone today. Maybe picking up kind of where Jeremy left off, we had done much better in April in particular bringing food in and trucks. We were bringing 300 a day and it made a difference, you could see it in the population. In March, I was in the North at Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is a pediatric hospital, and I saw two-month-old babies that were starving to death because we weren’t getting enough up there. The mothers didn’t have enough food to lactate. So the situation was incredibly bad, incredibly dire. And what Catherine Russell said, even now is as correct as it was then, but we were doing better in April. But then Rafah started May 6th when the ceasefire talks fell through unfortunately, and they weren’t able to come to a deal for the release of the hostages. And that changed everything quite significantly.

And the way it changed was it really created an environment where law and order basically didn’t exist and you had essentially crime families controlling territory in Rafah. They shot at trucks, they shot at truck drivers, they stole anything of value and tried to resell it, and it made everything come to really a screeching halt for aid. Now, thankfully for the North of Gaza, we still had the crossings of Zikim and Erez, but that was still functioning and I think the North was doing better than the South at that point and continued to do well. But since May started, what was supposed to be a two-week operation in Rafah and now is still ongoing, we’ve just seen a continued deterioration of the law and order environment and a continued deterioration of our access.

And for us, what that means is we have limited entry points for aid. There’s only two primarily, Kerem Shalom and the ones in the North, and we’re not able to distribute aid where everyone is because some places require coordination with the forces on the ground. And that has not been an easy process all the time. And there’s been some very catastrophic failures, as we highlighted, World Central Kitchen and a couple of UN convoys that have come under fire, and we have lost one international staff as well as over 200 other UN workers throughout this conflict. So it is a difficult situation, and for us it’s quite frustrating I have to say, because logistically this is very simple.

From Kerem Shalom to where I’m sitting, it’s about 15 kilometers, it’s all flat. It’s not hard to move things. We have the capacity and we could do it. We have 100,000 metric tons of food waiting either in Ashdod, Al Arish in Egypt, or in Jordan ready to come in, and that’s more than enough for the entire population for three months, but it would give everybody what they need as we move into winter. Now the second winter, and we’re very concerned about people’s immune systems and their resilience and their ability to withstand the cold, as well as not only our inability to bring in food, but our inability to bring in tents and shelter repair kits and these kinds of things that will help in the winter.

So I think we find ourselves kind of on the precipice of either doing much better or a man-made disaster in Gaza as we move forward in time. But hopefully we’ll be given the opportunity to do better and help stabilize the situation for the population here while we hopefully wait for a ceasefire and the return of the hostages as you said, Katherine. I think I’ll pause there and we can hear from David. Thank you.

Katherine Wilkens: Do you want to venture before we move on to David, any specific steps, any specific... I mean opening more crossings is one thing that you mentioned. What about access in general between humanitarian trucks or commercial trucks, the mix?

Scott Anderson: So we’ve seen also a reduction starting this week and the number of commercial trucks that are being allowed to enter Gaza, it was around 200 a day, now it’s down to 50. The cabinet in Israel was meeting today to have a discussion and make a decision on whether or not to completely stop access for commercial trucks. And that’s something that we need even if we’re bringing aid in. Commercial sector and the humanitarian sector really need to work hand in hand, and having the commercial sector have access is very important.

I think the two big things that would help, one is we would welcome the IDF providing security in the Rafah area so we can move trucks in at scale, and I think they’re the only ones that can do it at this point, that can provide security for the humanitarian convoys. We would also welcome additional crossings coming in. We’ve talked about Kerem Shalom and we’ve talked about the North, but we would welcome other options to bring aid in at scale.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you. So, David, I let everyone go on. It’s an interesting topic and the story’s important, but now I want to ask you from your experience, from the work that you’ve done, the success that you had when you were in the role to manage this, what should be done next? And to try to understand what the goal here is. The goal seems to be to starve people. I mean, how do we prevent that and how do we move on?

David Satterfield: Katherine, first, Jeremy’s report is excellent and the narrative presented there is virtually word for word the narrative that I would put forward. And without embarrassing him, I do want to single out Scott. No single individual has worked longer at this under more extreme circumstances and maintained always an objectivity and a resourceful, don’t define the problem, define the resolution approach, Scott, than you have. So I can’t go without praising you for your work throughout.

Now, what is to be done? What is to be done today as we enter October is exactly the same thing that needed to be done in that first, second, and third week of October last year. When President Biden came to Israel on the 18th of October, he told Prime Minister Netanyahu, the security cabinet, publicly and privately that two things needed to be done. First, the military campaign, the kinetic campaign, needed to be prosecuted with utmost vigor. The United States had Israel’s back on this. It was essential that Hamas not be in a position to either threaten Israel from a military security sense as it had on October 7th, or to impose its governance upon the 2.3 million people of Gaza.

But the President had another message. The other message was that first task will take considerable time and space. We didn’t know, no one did at that moment, just how much time and space would be required. We didn’t understand any of us, the extent to which Hamas had dedicated 16 years in diverting humanitarian assistance, commercial assistance, into the tunnel network, into building not a terrorist gang, but a terrorist military, 30,000 plus strong. The President said, "You must prosecute a humanitarian campaign with the same vigor, the same attention, and the same effectiveness as you do your kinetic campaign." That was on October 18th. That has never happened.

I disagree fundamentally with any assessment, whether ICJ or other, that there is a deliberate Israeli policy attempt to starve the people of Gaza. I do not believe the evidence supports such an assertion. What I do believe and what Scott has commented after May 6th, 7th, what Jeremy has reported, the October to May narrative indicates that it is not intent. It is lack of effort, which is difficult in a hyperkinetic environment. We all understand that. This is an extraordinarily complex campaign because of the entanglement deliberately by Hamas of civilian population, civilian infrastructure, humanitarian infrastructure. But Israel has not undertaken the necessary measures even given or particularly because of this complex context, to assure that assistance can be distributed throughout Gaza that shelter, medical care, what are the basics of life can be provided, not just to avoid famine, but to avoid the profound malnutrition, chronic wasting, and the mortality and morbidity of vulnerable population.

Katherine Wilkens: David, what would those steps be if you [inaudible 00:22:44].

David Satterfield: They’re first and foremost a clear instruction to the combatant forces in Gaza to facilitate in a defined, concrete, and monitored fashion, monitored by CLA, the on-the-ground branch of COGAT, to ensure that the continued deconfliction problems do not occur or are minimized, to ensure that denial of moves is explained cogently.

Look, Scott and I have been through this for a year of why it is, there is no explanation given. 89% I believe of all requests to move North in the last week or two have been denied from South to North. As the North enters a much more opaque potential famine situation than has been the case since March, this hasn’t been fixed. It is not lack of asking the question at the most senior answers. It is a lack of commitment on the part of combatant forces to doing what combatant forces, especially given Gaza, need to do.

Katherine Wilkens: But, David, let me interrupt you just because of the time and I really want to ask you two more questions. But the first thing is the polio campaign, the first round of the polio campaign happened.

David Satterfield: Indeed, it did.

Katherine Wilkens: Somehow, somehow the message got through for that. Why can’t the message get through for food and water and humanitarian trucks?

David Satterfield: Katherine, I’ll be blunt.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you.

David Satterfield: It got through for two reasons, because the specter of an outbreak of polio carries a message around the world, which would have redounded negatively upon Israel. Point one. Point two, the sewage flows from Gaza, moved North up the coast to Ashdod, to Ashkelon, and eventually to the Tel Aviv beaches. Israel has a significant non or inadequately vaccinated population, the ultra-Orthodox. Israel recognized it was not just a reputational threat, it was a genuine health threat to Israel and Israelis, and they showed they could do it.

Katherine Wilkens: So what you’re saying is, where there’s a will, there’s a way?

David Satterfield: Absolutely. And the will is [inaudible 00:25:16].

Katherine Wilkens: Well, so how do we encourage the will?

David Satterfield: The will has never been present.

Katherine Wilkens: And is there anything that the United States of America can do to help make the will present? That’s one question. And the other, just because I want to get it in before we have to close, is whether you have any comments on what the implications of the new situation in Lebanon, the war in Lebanon has on Gaza?

David Satterfield: Sure. Katherine, we have throughout this, at the level of the president on down, worked on the basis of incremental progress. That is to say you cannot do everything in a day or a week, but this week ought to be better than the week before and the week before that, that was the case from October 21 with some short reversals, until the afternoon evening of May 6th, May 7th, when it all stopped, literally stopped, and then never resumed at volumes adequate to prevent malnutrition and perhaps famine, perhaps famine, over time.

What can be done beyond this? It is to return to the type of focused actions which did occur up through May 6th. It can be done, but the environment is much more difficult now because of lawlessness, because of physical kinetic disruption, and the displacement upon displacement of the population into a smaller and smaller area. It is still manageable, but I’ll conclude this question with the following, the strategic gain, and I have always seen the strategic imperative of a military diminishment disruption of Hamas always.

And I did through the beginning of the Rafah campaign, but right now, since the end of May, beginning of June, the strategic loss to Israel, each day this fighting goes on in Gaza, outweighs the limited strategic gains. As the President has said, this needs to stop and it needs to stop not just because it’s good to do or from a humanitarian standpoint, it is because the continuation of this campaign does not advance Israeli strategic interests in Gaza for the future.

Now, Lebanon. The impact on the Lebanon actions is difficult to discern. It certainly has shifted focus away from Gaza. Does it present, I’m opining now, an opportunity to perhaps justify a switch away from the heavy kinetic campaign to something more static, less intensive? I don’t know because the kinetic actions in Gaza continue. They have not been interrupted, diminished, but they continue. So really, Katherine, too early to say what is or is not the consequence.

Gaza, does Sinwar, assuming Sinwar is alive, reflect upon what has happened to the Hezbollah leadership and decide now is the moment to accept a ceasefire which he has been unwilling to accept. And I’ll point that blame squarely, it is Hamas’s refusal to respond to ceasefire proposals on issues where they hold the key, that has produced the stalemate or lack of progress. There are Israeli issues, but they are secondary. The primary reason there is no ceasefire in Gaza lies squarely with Hamas and its in-Gaza leadership. So I can’t speculate how Sinwar, if he is still around, calculates these things. Too hard to do.

Katherine Wilkens: Okay. Well, we’ve covered a lot, but we haven’t gotten into the recommendations of Jeremy’s report and where we might go from there. So, Jeremy, I turn it back to you.

Jeremy Konyndyk: Thanks so much. Yeah, in terms recommendations, I think it is largely consistent with what both Scott and David have laid out. I think the crude reality underscored by the polio campaign is that when the IDF and when the Israeli Government want aid to get through, want an operation to occur, want aid groups to have access, that can be done. Within the course of a few weeks, World Health Organization and its partner teams were able to reach, I think Scott, it was 87% of kids under 10 in Gaza?

Scott Anderson: Yeah.

Jeremy Konyndyk: And if you can reach them with a shot, you can reach them with food, you can reach them with other services. And from talking to some of the people who were involved in that operation, they did see a markedly different, a markedly more cooperative supportive facilitation by the IDF forces on the ground than they were used to seeing. And that is really what it comes down to, as David said, the will has been lacking. What would that look like in practice? Improved security in the South, getting the Rafah crossing functional again. Obviously, Egypt has a hand in that as well, ensuring continued access to the North and for a wider range, a wider range of supplies, stop striking aid workers there continue to be attacks on aid workers, and that makes everything much more difficult. Approve movement requests. David hit the nail on the head with the lack of communication for when movement requests are denied. Why is that? When will it happen again?

I think the question of deliberate intent with respect to the outcome of, are they intending to achieve a famine or not? I think that is a muddy question and it’s hard to prove. What’s not hard to prove is that they’re not doing everything that is manifestly within their capacity to facilitate a much more substantial aid operation than we’ve seen over the past year.

Katherine Wilkens: So let me just say, on intent, I mean obviously no one can gauge intent, but we know when steps, when it was pushed, when David worked it out and we were able to get progress, then we avoided what was famine conditions that everyone believed was coming. So everyone knows what needs to be done to avoid famine, and yet for some reason in the case of polio, which I think it’s important to mention one thing about the polio campaign, is that even though it did go quite well and we are all hoping we have the second round, there was a very difficult incident that UNRWA experienced trying to go North to do the shots and it was an eight-hour standoff and it was pretty aggressive.

And it brings me to the point of I think it would be helpful if we all underscored the key importance of UNRWA and the role that they play on the ground and how critical and vital it is and how nobody else can play it. And I don’t really know what the background is on that incident, but it was the one hiccup in the campaign for polio. But we know from polio that if there’s a will, there’s a way. And so I’m trying to get at what those key steps are that could move us forward. And you can go, Jeremy. Every one of you would be helpful.

Jeremy Konyndyk: Maybe one more and then I know Scott and David will have a lot to say. One thing that was really striking after the World Central Kitchen attack, there was some increased dialogue between humanitarians and IDF Southern Command, and one of the complaints was a checkpoint where humanitarians were being harassed all the time. The head of IDF Southern Command went out and read the riot act to the troops on that checkpoint, and the behavior changed immediately. The next day, organizations passing through were treated professionally with respect. They were not treated like a threat or like adversaries as they had been up to that point.

So again, it underscores that it can be fixed and they’re choosing not to fix it. Once that unit rotated off the checkpoint, the behavior deteriorated again. So it has to be prioritized. And except when the Israeli Government is under political pressure, they’re not prioritizing.

Katherine Wilkens: So I think I’ll go to you, David, before Scott.

David Satterfield: Absolutely, Jeremy. The WCK blunder, that horrible mistake was a shock to the Israeli system from the Prime Minister down. They wanted as a matter of political decision to see WCK succeed because it would’ve been a demonstration case for non-UN humanitarian organizations being able to effectively and promptly deliver aid. And in the wake of that shock, where they tried their best to make a successive WCK and it didn’t work because of their errors, you are right, we did have a brief period of improved performance which shows it can be done when concerted political will and attention is paid.

And I am not absolving the political authority here in any way, but this responsibility for conduct on the ground doesn’t lie primarily with COGAT, nor should it with the Prime Minister or with the Minister of Defense. It lies with Southern Command and the specialized security units operating in Gaza. As Scott knows well, this is how responsibility flows in any field environment and it has never been implemented with a discipline and a consistency. It’s not intent. It is effect, and effect matters greatly here.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you. Scott?

Scott Anderson: Yeah, just to say I agree with what Jeremy and David have said, and we have a good interaction with Southern Command, with COGAT, with CLA, and when the head of Southern Command, as David said, comes to the checkpoint, things improve markedly. I would hope that we would get more attention than just the head of Southern Command. There are other commanders that can do this and he can only be in one place at a time, and he has other things to do.

Now, I think that following the horrible events of October 7th, there’s been a bit of a schism between the UN and Israel, and that manifests on the ground in various ways and unfortunately our only interaction is at checkpoints. And I think something that would help significantly is if we could meet with the IDF, with the soldiers coming in on the ground before they’re actually here, and explain what it is that we do, talk through how we work, and maybe there’s things we could adjust that would make it better.

But the most dangerous place for humanitarians in Gaza, anywhere in Gaza at the moment is at the checkpoint, waiting to cross the checkpoint or at the checkpoint, and that’s where it should be the safest because it should be the most controlled. They know we’re coming, they’ve approved us coming. We don’t just show up at the checkpoint without prior coordination. And it’s just as David said, it’s effect. I’ve been around the region for a while, not as long as David, but I’ve been here in Gaza and worked with the IDF for 16 years, and I’ve found them to be very good to work with.

So I don’t think it’s the intention, but then also as David said, COGAT doesn’t control the soldiers on the ground. That’s not their role. Their role is to be our interlocutor into the IDF, and they do it quite well, and I enjoy working with them. But we need consistent process, consistent effect on the ground so that every time we go, it’s not something different because it’s hard for us to plan and react for that.

I just have one last thing, Katherine, in the interest of time. It’s something David said where he talked about diversion. Preventing diversion is incredibly important to us. If we can’t access the North, we can’t prevent diversion because we can’t be there. We have to have access so we can see what’s happening, make sure people are getting the food that’s meant to go to them, but we can’t do that if we’re not giving access to cross the checkpoint and go up and make sure things are happening the way they’re supposed to happen. Thank you.

David Satterfield: Katherine, could I ask one question which is important for the listeners to understand?

Katherine Wilkens: Yeah, please.

David Satterfield: A consistent Israeli indictment of the UN in particular has been the lack of logistical capacity. That is to say there aren’t enough trucks, there was too slow a procurement process to acquire the necessary capacity on the ground. Scott, what’s the status of truck acquisition right now?

Katherine Wilkens: I’m sorry, just for clarity, you are talking about their point that they say there aren’t enough trucks on the other side of the border?

David Satterfield: In Gaza.

Katherine Wilkens: Yes, because people have to know that trucks come up to the crossing point and then they—

David Satterfield: They drop their loads and then are picked up.

Scott Anderson: So it’s not a problem, it’s a very short answer. We’ve procured more trucks both for the UN but also for the contractor that helps take things out of the crossing. And our issue is not logistical capacity. As I said earlier, this logistically is actually pretty simple. It’s a short movement, it’s flat, there’s no hills, there’s not a lot to contend with. The issue that’s preventing us from bringing aid in at scale is the lack of law and order in Rafah, and that all changed on May 6th when the Rafah operation started. And there is no police presence in Gaza and that’s what’s preventing it. It’s not logistics and it’s not will. It’s the simple fact the environment does not enable us to do what needs to be done.

Katherine Wilkens: That does bring me back to the question, another question I had for Scott, but for all of you. So one of the comments that Catherine Russell made was about the increased looting and the looting of smuggling, and it’s come to a point where now there’s looting of aid supplies. And so in this environment, it’s very hard for humanitarians who are going in without any protection. My understanding, it’s who responsibility is it to provide the secure environment for these trucks?

I mean, humanitarians have sometimes lead cars, they’re allowed to have security in them, but those people are not allowed to carry weapons anyways. And so that’s really not security. Commercial trucks apparently are coming in pre-cleared with armed guards, but someone has the responsibility for providing security for humanitarians, and that should be the occupying power. Yes, that’s a question.

Scott Anderson: And globally, the United Nations relies on the host nation to provide security and to provide an environment for us to function. Here, in my mind, that would be Israel. They’re the ones that should and can provide that security if they so desire.

Katherine Wilkens: David, do you agree?

David Satterfield: Katherine, we do not, the US government, regard Israel as an occupying power.

Katherine Wilkens: I know, sorry.

David Satterfield: We do, however, and we have told this to them, regard them as having responsibility precisely as Scott noted for security on the ground. We have reinforced our position with them at the level of the Prime Minister and down. Their responsibility does not end with the dropping of assistance across the border at Rafah or Kerem Shalom. It continues in Gaza. Full stop.

Katherine Wilkens: Okay. Thank you for that and thank you for the correction. Well, I think we can open it up, we have about 15 minutes left, for a few questions from the audience, and I leave that to our technical team. A question from the audience, "According to you, what are the Israeli plans and strategies for the future of Gaza?"

Scott Anderson: Starting with an easy question, I see.

Katherine Wilkens: You can comment, yes.

Scott Anderson: I think the short answer is I don’t know. And at the moment, I’m not putting a lot of thought to it because we’re concerned about the humanitarian situation on the ground and we cannot, and there will not be plans put in place for the future of Gaza until there’s a ceasefire and the hostages have been returned to their families. That’s what has to happen first and foremost. And then we can begin discussions about early recovery and all those things that come with it.

I will say that what’s happened in Gaza and what happened in Israel has been horrible, but perhaps this is an opportunity to look at a different Gaza for the future and do things a little differently than we have done in the past. Thank you.

David Satterfield: Well said, Scott. And I will only note here when I’m asked about day after planning, I have emphasized it’s the day before that will or will not permit any day-after concept to be achieved. And that requires several things, release of the hostages and enduring ceasefire, a non-ability of Hamas to assert its own governing authority presence on the ground in the face of either stabilization or reconstruction efforts. And it requires not least a political vision that incorporates a unified Gaza West Bank, not one separate from the other. And a pathway, a credible pathway to an agreed permanent status resolution. All hard to do, but those are what’s necessary. This situation today does not permit a day after to take place.

Katherine Wilkens: You may have to be re-recruited, David, to help make that happen. I mean, you all know that there was, I believe an anonymous comment from the administration, someone in the administration, that there would be no ceasefire agreement while President Biden is still in office, which I guess takes us to January. What do you make of that?

David Satterfield: Katherine, that’s not... I’ll speak now of our position.

Katherine Wilkens: Yes.

David Satterfield: The work on a ceasefire continues. It is exceedingly difficult to see achieved, separated from Lebanon completely because that’s the right thing to do. We can only present, we, Egypt, Qatar, so much if there is no response from Sinwar, silence, or an added set of demands as took place in July, then a ceasefire isn’t going to come. But we have not walked away from this. And very frankly, we’re not going to. A ceasefire is too important from the humanitarian standpoint, including living American hostages, and to get to that day after which is something less miserable and disastrous for the people of Gaza and the people of Israel, we will continue those efforts as long as this administration is in power.

Katherine Wilkens: Okay.

Jeremy Konyndyk: Katherine, just one additional thought. I agree with that and I think it is not strongly, I’ll put it this way, neither Netanyahu nor Sinwar have shown greater alacrity on getting to a ceasefire and getting to a hostage release. And I think we do need to at least be ready for a contingency or a scenario in which that is quite a ways off. And the day after is not so much a day after as we are just in the new normal, and this could go on for quite a long time.

I think one of the dynamics within the administration has been putting off more pressure on the Israeli government over the immediate humanitarian situation in the hopes of getting just around the corner to that ceasefire into that deal. If you accept that there’s a non-trivial chance that we may not get there, we may not get there in the near term, I think it puts more of an onus than to put greater pressure on the Israeli Government on the kind of finding the will to address the humanitarian situation that we’ve been talking about.

Katherine Wilkens: I think that’s a good point. I think that, well, one of the challenges is obviously that we don’t know if Sinwar is alive, right? And so given everything that’s gone on, is there a role for the Palestinian authority at this stage or this is not a role that they want to take at this stage? But in order to leave no stone unturned, to try to get to a ceasefire and an end and save the lives that are at stake here on all sides, the hostages and the people who are waning away on low rations and terrible situation in Gaza, is that an option?

David Satterfield: Katherine, I say this in a wholly non-judgmental fashion, there is virtually no role for Ramallah in Gaza at this moment. Some for very good reasons, deep concern on the part of the PA over the exposure of PA personnel, were they to be allowed by Israel to take up authority in Gaza from a Hamas threat? And the fundamental reluctance of Abbas to step forward, Israeli reluctance to see him step forward, mutually reinforcing circumstances that essentially place these decisions in Sinwar’s hands, not even partially in those of Ramallah and the PA.

Katherine Wilkens: Okay. We have another audience question that’s asking for your recommendations on what steps all branches of the US Government can take to help Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Jeremy, you want to start?

Jeremy Konyndyk: I’ll take a swing at that one. I think it really comes down to what can Congress do to generate the kind of will from the Israeli Government that we’ve been talking about because that is the biggest variable right now. What we documented in our report was that the ups and downs really correlate to the conduct of IDF forces on the ground as David and Scott talked about, and they correlate to the policy decisions of the Israeli Government. So creating the kind of urgency and the kind of motivation that we saw around polio, I think it will only come through some form of outside pressure the more that Congress is, A, continuing to pay attention to this. I would love to see a hearing on Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, show that there is congressional interest in that.

Jeremy Konyndyk: I think the kind of work that some members have done to try and put conditions on weapons transfers, which is something that Refugees International has called for, and I think has been called for widely across the humanitarian community, that there needs to be some accountability for this situation. And holding the Israeli Government accountable, not just for the processes that they manage, but for the outcomes that those are having on the ground.

Katherine Wilkens: David? Go ahead, Scott.

Scott Anderson: Just very quickly. And for me, I mean I think the Government’s doing a lot already. What we really want to see is them continue to put pressure on Hamas and facilitate with Israel how to get to a ceasefire. That will help more than anything in Gaza. Absent that, we just have to understand this is a marathon and it’s a daily grind. It’s not something you can wave a wand and say it’s now fixed. It requires daily attention and we just have to keep making, as David said earlier, incremental improvements every day because we’re not going to go from zero to 100. We’ll go from zero to 10, 10 to 20, and eventually we get to 100, but we just need the constant attention and the constant support, and the humanitarian community needs funding to continue doing what we’re doing and deliver life-saving aid to the people in Gaza.

Katherine Wilkens: Do you have anything to add, David?

David Satterfield: I agree.

Katherine Wilkens: Okay. Well, I mean it all makes sense, but in the interim, as we hear the reports that we are so near to famine again and that people come to that already with a weakened situation from having gone through everything up to now, I don’t see how for the long term, for the short term, for any term, and from a humanitarian perspective, we can allow that to happen. And so we need, if we could pick two or three immediate steps, what would they be? Would they be open, more crossing points? Would they be accompany humanitarian trucks in? I’m just looking for something that can prevent that from happening while we are still doing the ceasefire discussions.

David Satterfield: Katherine, it requires an end or an essential end to the kinetic, hyperkinetic campaigning, and to the continued ordered displacements into the very small area that remains of the old so-called humanitarian zone, Mawasi. It means the return of civilian populations to areas where the humanitarian implementers can access them with security. Now this is a hard, hard ask after beginning of May because it requires a stabilization of the situation on the ground that is not the product of Arab force introduction. That’s still very far off. It means that Israel has to undertake actions and with refrain withhold actions that stop any of these things from happening.

David Satterfield: You’re not going to get delivery of assistance, you’re not going to get an accurate discernment of malnutrition, wasting or famine. So long as this concentration at a kinetic atmosphere of 1.78 million people in Mawasi continues, they’ve got to be allowed to return to their home. Enough needs to be declared as enough in terms of the inertia now, which drives, I assess, most of the kinetic campaign.

Katherine Wilkens: And do you think there are people in the current Israeli Government who understand that?

David Satterfield: Oh, I believe you can start with the Minister of Defense, the chief of staff of the IDF, the head of Shin Bet, and the other senior security officials, all of whom have essentially called increasingly publicly in many cases for exactly this outcome. In the interests of Israel, this needs to happen. It should have happened sometime ago.

Katherine Wilkens: And the primary factor that is preventing it from happening?

David Satterfield: Political paralysis.

Katherine Wilkens: Okay. Well, on that note, I think we can all appreciate how difficult political paralysis can be. I don’t know if as we go through our elections, etc., if there’s anything that we believe the United States can contribute to ending that political paralysis. But as we near the end of this conversation, I’m open to suggestions.

David Satterfield: I’ll simply say, and I say this with Scott, it requires even in the midst of our own political situation, Israel’s political situation, which we understand. It is as real as ours is, the continued focus on specific steps to be done or not to be done, which is an 18-hour a day undertaking, every day of the week needs to be done with connectivity from the field, which means Scott to the US, to the other implementing agencies, UN and non-UN in the humanitarian community, back to Washington at the highest levels. It’s not a radical proposal, it’s the way it worked until Rafah blew it all up. It can be put back, but oh, it’s hard. But hard doesn’t mean impossible.

Katherine Wilkens: On the issue of the role of the UN on the ground and the relationship with some of the leadership in Israel with the UN for various reasons, what’s gone on, how can we crack that nut when there seems to be such animosity and distrust and anger in order to change the situation? I’m sorry, David, to lean on you, but after over four decades, you know the answers.

David Satterfield: It’s not a radical new answer I’m going to give you. It’s to continue to reinforce at the highest levels. Put big UNRWA, regional UNRWA aside, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. Put aside the educational programs and focus solely ratchet down on the logistical capacities, vehicles, drivers, loaders, warehouse managers, the people who work the delivery and distribution of assistance on the ground in Gaza and certain other specific undertakings, UNRWA feeding, to the extent they still exist, fueling of wells, sewage pickup, waste pickup, focus just on that and recognize right now and in the immediate future, there is no magical solution or alternative to what UNRWA has and can do on the ground. In the future, [inaudible 00:57:29], who knows? But for right now, it has to be UNRWA in significant measure.

David Satterfield: You cannot, if you are Israel, simultaneously undertake a meaningful humanitarian effort while conducting this campaign against all aspects of UNRWA functioning, which includes the ability of UNRWA staff to receive goods from the Jordanian army trucks in the North. You can’t selectively hold what remains of the legs of a table out from under it while conducting a humanitarian and kinetic campaign. It’s too many things all at once. It makes all of it fail.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you very much for that. And, Scott, I’m going to give you the last word. We want to thank you for all that you do and for the day-to-day work that you and the people that work with you do. And anything that you would like to add to this conversation, you get the last minute.

Scott Anderson: All right. No, thank you, Katherine. It was really an honor and a pleasure to be here today with David and Jeremy and you. And I think that we’ve talked about all the solutions, but the most urgent thing that is needed, and we hope happens soon, is the ceasefire. The hostages need to go home. It’s been almost a year they’ve been away from their families ,and then people in Gaza can begin to meaningfully rebuild their lives. And that’s needed most for everyone and we hope that that comes very soon. Until then, we’ll be here every day doing our best to get aid to people and making sure we’re meeting their basic necessities. Thank you.

Katherine Wilkens: Thank you and thanks to all of you for the conversation.