Aid Needs To Get to Palestinian People in Gaza, Administration Officials Say
Republicans like DeSantis continue to denigrate Palestinian civilians
The Biden administration is arranging for $100 million in humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians living in Gaza and trapped between Hamas and Israeli forces during the ongoing conflict in the region.
Meanwhile, Republicans including Florida Gov Ron DeSantis already are falsely trying to conflate aid to Palestinian civilians with help for Hamas.
Although President Biden and his administration have been solidly behind Israel since the most recent wave of violence began with the Hamas attacks of October 7, in recent days more official attention has been turning towards the suffering of the 2.2 million Palestinians living in Gaza, half of whom are children.
The conditions for Gazans — who already were living in extreme poverty and want due to strict border control by Israel — have deteriorated further as Israel has cut off all food, water and other resources to the area.
Israeli forces reportedly are preparing for a massive ground invasion of Gaza after more than a week of airstrikes.
“We want to see sustained humanitarian assistance going into Gaza for the benefit of innocent civilians. The exact discussions about how we implement that are exactly what Ambassador Satterfield is engaged in right now, so I wouldn't want to get ahead of those discussions,” said State Department spokesman Matt Miller, referring to David Satterfield who serves as special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues. “But it is our — our intention, our goal and what we're working to secure — is ongoing assistance to innocent civilians.”
However, prominent figures on the political right like presidential aspirant DeSantis, are baselessly and falsely conflating help for Palestinian civilians with aid to Hamas.
“Now we find out that Biden wants to send 100 million of your tax dollars to the Gaza Strip. Now, they say that this is for humanitarian purposes, but let me tell you this: Hamas runs the Gaza Strip. That money will be commandeered by Hamas,” said DeSantis, who has developed a recent habit of saying false and reckless things regarding Palestinians.
Indeed, the Biden administration will be guarding against such assistance being commandeered by Hamas, according to White House national security official Jon Finer.
“We believe those trucks will get into Gaza over the course of the next day or so. The president has also been quite clear, though, that if we see that aid, being misappropriated, being taken, essentially by Hamas for its own purposes, that that will affect the continued distribution of assistance,” Finer said. “And so he sent a strong message that this aid needs to get to the Palestinian people in Gaza, to civilians in Gaza, that this is not some sort of support program for fighters and we will see how that unfolds.
“But that was a major focus of the president's visit to Israel and the diplomacy that he did by phone with President El-Sisi and others in the region yesterday,” he added, referring to the leader of neighboring Egypt.
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