There were early predictions of catastrophic destruction in Gaza before it was blacked out
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In an article by commentator Ishaan Tharoor, he stated that in February 2024, American diplomats drafted a stark warning to then-President Joe Biden and senior national security officials. The Israeli military campaign in Gaza had become so devastating that the northern part of the Strip had been reduced to a “catastrophic wasteland” suffering from “catastrophic humanitarian needs.”
Food, clean drinking water, and medicine were already scarce as Israeli bombardment leveled parts of the besieged territory. A cable prepared by officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), working with UN agencies and humanitarian organizations, cited eyewitness accounts of bodies strewn about and human remains left to rot in the devastated streets. This particular cable, sent last week, was one of five similar cables sent in early 2024, documenting the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Suppressing Cables for Lack of Balance
According to the news agency, a cable warning of the “devastation” of Gaza was suppressed by then-US Ambassador Jack Lew and his deputy, who believed it lacked balance. The cables did not reach senior officials in the Biden administration at the White House, who were responsible for formulating US policy toward Gaza at the time, the agency reported.
This incident reveals tensions within the Biden administration regarding its support for Israel’s war against Hamas following the October 7, 2013, attacks. Several US diplomats, including former USAID officials, expressed their dissatisfaction with what they perceived as Biden’s leniency toward Netanyahu and his reluctance to link US aid to Israel to its adherence to international humanitarian law.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu and his allies continued their attacks on Biden over some statements in which he expressed concern and a brief, symbolic suspension of a small portion of US military aid to Israel, which continued to flow largely unimpeded.
The death toll in Gaza has reached over 71,000, according to local health authorities. After months of questioning Hamas’s figures, the Israeli military has accepted this number as likely accurate, according to reports in The Times of Israel and Haaretz, citing an Israeli military official.
The official acknowledged that he had no statistics on the missing or the bodies trapped under more than 61 million tons of rubble in the Gaza Strip. When asked about the reports, an Israeli military official told The Washington Post that a briefing had taken place, but clarified that the figure of 70,000 victims was not officially recognized by the military.
Full reconstruction will take decades. Two years on, the Reuters cable seems like a mere footnote in history. Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza during prolonged periods of conflict have exacerbated the crises within the territory.
