DEEP DIVE — It’s one of those “private” documents that was almost certainly written for public consumption. A spokesman for Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the stern letter from Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Israeli leaders, dated Sunday and quickly leaked to Israel’s Channel 12, was “not about making any kind of threats.”
“It’s about seeing the situation reversed,”State spokesman Matthew Miller said, “so that the civilians in Gaza who are not getting adequate access to food and medicine and other humanitarian goods today actually see as a result of our efforts a change in their daily lives.”
While U.S. officials stuck publicly to the not-a-threat line (NSC spokesman John Kirby insisted that this was just the latest in a series of requests that the Israelis to do more to allow aid to reach Gaza), the Blinken-Austin letter amounts to an ultimatum, with a tight 30-day deadline and a detailed list of benchmarks Israel must meet if it wants to keep the U.S. arms pipeline flowing. And though not explicitly political, the message may appeal to a broad segment of the American public that wants to see the U.S. be more forceful in pressing Israel to end the suffering of innocent people caught in the crossfire between the Israeli military and the Iran-sponsored militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Hence the leak of the letter, and the public nature of the conversation.
The letter included a long list of complaints: it said that “the amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year.” Since March, the letter said, the amount of aid delivered to Gaza had dropped by more than 50 percent. North Gaza has been especially hard-hit: in September, the letter said, Israel impeded nearly 90 percent of humanitarian aid movements between north and south Gaza.
Along with the complaints came accusations: Israel had imposed “burdensome and excessive…restrictions” and “onerous liability and customs requirements for humanitarian staff and shipments, which were “contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza.” It said the U.S. was “deeply concerned” about legislation recently adopted by the Knesset, Israel’s legislative body, that would strip protections from the United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, and “devastate the Gaza humanitarian response at this critical moment.”
Then came the demands.
Blinken and Austin said that Israel must take a series of steps within 30 days, including allowing at least 350 aid trucks into Gaza each day, instituting pauses in the fighting to facilitate the aid deliveries, and reversing evacuation orders for civilians unless there is a clear and urgent operational need.
“We made clear there's a short window in which we want to see changes because the humanitarian situation is so dire on the ground,” Miller said at a State Department briefing Tuesday. “We have seen Israel make changes before, and when they make changes, humanitarian assistance can increase. And we have seen Israel just in the past few months work with humanitarian organizations to implement a polio vaccination campaign inside Gaza. So we know that it’s possible to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. We know it can be done. We know that the various logistical and bureaucratic obstacles can be surmounted, and so it is incumbent upon the Government of Israel to surmount those challenges and get assistance in.”
The letter marks a stark shift in U.S. policy in this war, and a rarity in the long American friendship with Israel: an ask that was conveyed as a set of demands, with timetables included. "Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy...and relevant U.S. law," the letter said.
The law in question
That reference to U.S. law in the Blinken-Austin letter was also unusual, and it cast the message to Israel as a matter of legal requirement as much foreign policy.
The letter stated that when Israel interferes with aid deliveries, it is violating U.S. law and policies, thereby creating a situation the Biden administration can neither justify nor overlook. “There are provisions of U.S. law that we follow, and we will always follow those provisions, and part of that is expecting that the Israeli Government fully comply with the requirements under international humanitarian law to make sure that humanitarian assistance gets into Gaza,” Miller said.
The law at issue is section 620I, a 1996 amendment to the federal Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that barred U.S. foreign aid to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.” That provision was enacted by Congress in response to Turkey’s closure of its land border with Armenia in the 1990s, which slowed the movement of U.S. humanitarian aid. It then gave rise to National Security Memorandum-20, issued by the White House in February 2024, that obligated Israel and other countries receiving U.S. arms to not “arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and United States Government-supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.”
The Blinken-Austin letter referenced section 620I and the recent NSC memorandum directly, and its message was clear: if Israeli leaders continued to block or slow-roll humanitarian aid, they would be violating U.S. law and taking a substantial risk that their nation’s future defense posture would be jeopardized.
That said, it’s a law that has rarely been used in this fashion.
According to a research paper published by the non-profit Arms Control Association, successive U.S. administrations have chosen not to deny arms to an ally accused of violating humanitarian principles.
“Since the 1970s, Congress has enacted human rights laws governing weapons transfers and security assistance,” wrote the paper’s author, John Ramming Chappell, a fellow at the non-profit Center for Civilians in Conflict. “Those laws bind the executive branch, but for decades, the executive branch has evaded, ignored, and undermined those laws. Courts have declined to wade into disputes on the grounds that they pose ‘political questions’ inappropriate for judicial intervention.Implementation of legal restrictions on arms sales appears to be the exception rather than the rule.”
Is there an “or else”?
Will the Blinken-Austin ultimatum make a difference? Might it convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies on Israel’s hard right wing to act on the various demands, thus allowing more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza? That’s far from certain.
In the wake of the letter, U.S. officials were asked repeatedly to explain what would happen if Israel ignored its demands.
“We hope that Israel makes the changes that the Secretary outlined in the letter,” the State Department’s Miller said. The NSC’s Kirby would say only, "It appears to us that they (the Israelis) are taking this seriously.”
An Israeli official told Axios that “the letter has been received and is being thoroughly reviewed by Israeli security officials. Israel takes this matter seriously and intends to address the concerns raised in this letter with our American counterparts.” Another Israeli official said certain demands like opening border crossings and getting more aid trucks into Gaza might be addressed in the coming days.
Over the short run, Israel seems to have plenty of weapons to fight both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to defend itself against Iran’s missiles, drones and rockets. The latter is particularly important, given the likelihood that an Israeli retaliatory strike against Iran is imminent. On the same day that Blinken and Austin were sending their demands to Israel, the administration was announcing its planned delivery of a THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system, to Israel, along with a crew of U.S. military personnel to operate it. Since this system is for Israel’s protection – it’s in the name – the Biden administration isn’t likely to withhold it to force Israeli compliance.
There is only one precedent in the current war for any U.S. halt to weapons shipments to Israel. Last May, after Israel launched major ground operations in Rafah over the Biden administration’s objections, the White House “paused” one shipment of 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs. The shipment of 500-pound bombs was released during the summer. The 2,000-pound bomb shipment remained frozen.
But other arms sales and commitments to Israel have gone forward.
ACongressional Research Service report issued in July 2024 said that a 10-year bilateral military aid memorandum of understanding commits the United States to provide Israel $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and to spend $500 million annually on joint missile defense programs from FY2019 to FY2028.
Another CRS report, issued in August 2024, said that the administration had notified Congress of five potential arms sales to Israel totaling over $20 billion, including up to 50 new F-15IA fighter aircraft and F-15 upgrades and nearly 33,000 120 mm tank rounds.
And ProPublica reported on Oct. 4 that since October 2023, the U.S. had shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry to Israel.
In other words, for all its statements of concern about the humanitarian situation and plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the White House has – until now at least – not chosen to leverage its aid to influence Israel’s prosecution of the war.
There are several U.S. offensive weapons systems which Israel covets, and which therefore could be used for leverage. For instance, last June, with much fanfare in Israel, the Netanyahu government signed a deal with the U.S to buy 25 F-35 advanced stealth fighters built by Lockheed Martin for $3 billion, with delivery starting in 2028. Israel originally ordered 50 of these warplanes; 39 have already been delivered. According to the Times of Israel, with the new order, the Israeli Air Force’s F-35I fleet would expand to 75.
Then, in August, the State Department approved the sale to Israel of 50 F-15IA fighter aircraft, equipment updates for existing 25 F-15I+ aircraft and related items for $19 billion, with deliveries beginning in 2029.
These are essential elements in the current campaigns; Israel’s warplanes are now flying combat missions over Lebanon almost every day, and there’s no end in sight to that conflict either.
In the aftermath of the Blinken-Austin letter and its demands, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant traveled to Israel’s border with Lebanon to declare that Israeli forces will keep fighting, in the air and on land, until Israel’s north is safe for citizens to return to their homes there. "Hezbollah is in great distress," Gallant said, according to a statement released by his office. "We will hold negotiations only under fire, I said this on day one, I said it in Gaza and I am saying it here."
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