This is an adapted excerpt from the May 21 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Last Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would lift Israel’s blockade on Gaza and “allow a basic amount of food for the population to ensure that a hunger crisis does not develop,” though it seems a bit late for that. Food security experts warn that Gazans remain at “critical risk of famine.” Since March, an estimated 2 million Palestinians have been penned up behind a total Israeli blockade.
Doctors Without Borders called Israel’s aid announcement “a smokescreen.”
Netanyahu said this just hours after Israeli forces launched new extensive ground operations in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians have died in that offensive. On Wednesday, at least 82 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike, including several women and a week-old infant, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and area hospitals. (The Israeli military has repeatedly said it does “everything possible to limit civilian casualties in Gaza.”)
As the Israeli military carries out Netanyahu’s order to take full control of the region, residents of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, were forcibly displaced. People of all ages filled the streets, weakened by starvation and malnutrition, leaving with whatever they could still carry.
Doctors Without Borders called Israel’s aid announcement “a smokescreen,” writing: “The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving.”
After days of delay, the United Nations confirmed aid deliveries were reaching warehouses inside Gaza, but officials said the shipment was only a fraction of what was needed. Experts say it would take at least 500 aid trucks a day to stave off total famine. Earlier this month, a U.N. study concluded that 1 in 5 Gazans face starvation. As countries such as Canada, France and the United Kingdom speak out against the siege and blockade in Gaza, threatening “concrete actions” against Israel if it does not stop its new offensive, there has barely been a peep about it from the U.S. government. After days of delay, the U.N. confirmed aid deliveries were reaching warehouses inside Gaza, but officials said the shipment was only a fraction of what was needed. Donald Trump recently returned home from a Mideast tour that didn’t include Israel. Administration insiders have told reporters that Trump is tired of the war and frustrated with Netanyahu, with one telling The Washington Post that “Trump’s people are letting Israel know, ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war.’” Notwithstanding those reports, the United States seems pretty checked out on the largest current humanitarian crisis in the world today. The Trump administration has not publicly criticized Israel’s renewed offensive. And without action, as Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is part of a small group of American politicians who have been openly calling for an end to the bombardment and an immediate flood of aid, has said, the U.S. is “complicit” in the ongoing starvation in Gaza.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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