Ex-State Dept. Official: Israel Is Starving Gaza Now. We Can’t Wait Another 30 Days to Take Action

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh in New York, with Amy Goodman in Washington, D.C.

“Northern Gaza is being wiped off the map.” That’s the warning from Oxfam and 35 other humanitarian groups who say Israel’s siege on northern Gaza has reached a, quote, “horrifying level of atrocity.”

Earlier today, Israel’s military bombed an UNRWA school in Jabaliya housing hundreds of displaced Palestinian families. Al Jazeera reports the death toll from the attack has climbed to 25, with many children among the dead.

As Israel continues its siege on northern Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a letter Sunday threatening to cut off U.S. military assistance if Israel does not boost humanitarian aid access to Gaza within the next 30 days. The Biden administration has continued to arm Israel despite findings by its own experts at USAID and the State Department that Israel has routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine to Gaza in violation of U.S. law.

Politico has revealed that in August, Biden’s special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, Lise Grande, met with leaders of more than a dozen aid organizations and directly said the U.S. would not suspend arms to Israel. One person who attended the meeting told Politico, quote, “She was saying that the rules don’t apply to Israel.” Grande also reportedly said the United States will not, quote, “hold anything back that they want.”

We are joined now by Josh Paul. He’s a former veteran State Department official who resigned in protest of the push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. He’s a former director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department. On Wednesday, he and Tariq Habash, who resigned in protest from the Education Department, announced the formation of a new lobbying organization and a political action committee called A New Policy to push for Washington to take a new approach on Israel/Palestine.

Josh Paul, welcome back to Democracy Now! We’ll talk about this new organization and the PAC that you’ve formed, but first if you could respond to the letter that Austin and Blinken sent to Netanyahu, what it said and what it means that they gave Israel 30 days? Of course, in 30 days, that’s after the U.S. elections will take place and a new administration will be in power.

JOSH PAUL: Yes. Thank you, Amy. And good to join you this morning.

So, I want to clarify, to begin with, that the letter that Biden — sorry, that Blinken and Austin sent to their counterpart in the Israeli government didn’t actually threaten to cut off arms or to suspend security assistance. It simply said that there could be consequences under National Security Memorandum 20 and under U.S. law. What those consequences are, I think, remains to be seen, if at all. We have seen repeated expressions of concern from the United States government over the course of the last year.

And yet, what this letter makes clear, in its detail — and it is a detailed letter. It lists, I believe, 15 steps the United States would like to see Israel take to facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. What it does by doing so is demonstrate that the U.S. is currently in breach of its own laws. U.S. law says the U.S. cannot provide security or any form of assistance to a country that is restricting the delivery of U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance. Here we have, in writing from this administration, a list of the ways in which Israel is doing so, and yet U.S. military assistance continues to flow.

And, of course, nowhere in the law does it say, you know, “Give them 30 days to see if they can fix it.” The law is very clear that when it is made known to the president that assistance is being restricted, U.S. assistance cannot be provided. So, I think that there is, you know, plenty of reasons for skepticism here. And, of course, while people are starving on a daily basis in Gaza, dying of malnutrition, the time for this to be fixed is now. The time for it to be fixed was actually almost a year ago, but it is certainly now, not in 30 days.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Josh Paul, if you can talk — although you left the State Department protesting U.S. policy on Israel, and you were the person who approved weapons sales within the State Department, you clearly still have contacts within the State Department. Can you talk about what people are saying? I mean, everything from the revelations of ProPublica, also us speaking to other people who quit over reports coming out of the State Department saying clearly Israel is cutting — preventing humanitarian aid from coming in, and yet Blinken turns these reports around. What people are saying? Are there more resignations within the State Department? And what the U.S. accomplishes, since Netanyahu is such a clear ally of Trump and wants him to win, yet Biden still embraces him, supports him, and even with this warning letter, as you said, you know, the election will happen by the time they were to cut off aid if Israel doesn’t comply with what the U.S. is demanding?

JOSH PAUL: Yes. That last part, in particular, has been a bit of a mystery to me and, I think, lots of other people, because it has been very clear that Prime Minister Netanyahu has long had a preference for the Republican Party and for President Trump. He made that clear again when he came to Washington. He has made that clear in running rings around President Biden repeatedly over the course of the last year. So, what the thinking there is on the part of Democratic strategists, I just can’t fathom.

You know, with regard to how things are playing out within the State Department, it’s actually been a year to the day since I handed in my resignation at the State Department. And, you know, there was a significant increase in dissent, in protest within the department in the initial months of this conflict. I think the challenge is that none of that really led to any policy, because what we — or, policy changes, because what we have is a very tightly controlled set of decisions that are being made on a very political and politicized basis from the very top levels of the U.S. government.

You noted that within the State Department, there has been increasing transparency and pushes from USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and from, for example, the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, to submit to Secretary Blinken evidence that Israel is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance. I think it is worth noting that when ProPublica’s piece came out two weeks ago, reporting that these reports had gone to Secretary Blinken and he had cast them aside, those reports also — that report also noted that one of those officials, Julieta Valls Noyes, assistant secretary for population, refugees, and migration, had been asked if she felt that Section 620I of the law, that says we cannot provide assistance in these circumstances, had been triggered, her initial response was “Yes.” When she was pressed, she backed down. I think it’s worth noting that she quietly resigned a week ago, shortly after the ProPublica story came out.

So, I think there is a degree still of concern, and certainly of shame, amongst high-level officials. I know that amongst lower-level officials, there is immense pain. I’ve heard from people in the last week saying they don’t know if they can do this any longer. At the same time, I think there’s also a feeling of desperation and that there’s really nothing, under President Biden, that can be done or can be changed from the inside on this issue. So people are waiting to see what happens next and what happens after the election.

AMY GOODMAN: And do you see, from your vantage point as an insider, any space between Biden and Harris?

JOSH PAUL: I think that’s very hard to say. Certainly, Vice President Harris, as a candidate, has not given us much evidence that there is any space. On the contrary, she has said repeatedly that she will continue the policies set by President Biden, including of unconditional support for Israel. There are people around Vice President Harris. Her policy team are, I think, different than those around Biden. And I think, as well, that Harris is not the ideologue on this issue that President Biden is. But I do think that what we face here is a deep-rooted and very entrenched set of political, economic incentives that will make it very hard for anyone to change U.S. policy in this regard, regardless of the outcome of the election, or of this election. This is something that is going to take a long time to resolve and a lot of effort.

And to get to the point that you opened our session with, that’s why Tariq Habash and I and a group of extraordinary, remarkable leaders, including former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, have created A New Policy. This is a lobbying organization and a political action committee founded on the idea that what we face here is actually not a policy problem. We know what the policy problems are. The people in government know what the policy problems are. What we face here is a political problem. And until we fix the politics, until we play within this ugly system that we have to make it work in the interests of the American voters, the American people, American values, and the interests of all of the people in the region, we are not going to make headway. So, that is what we are out to do.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Josh Paul, if you could also respond to recent reports that suggest that Israel will launch retaliatory strikes against Iran within the next three weeks — that is to say, before the U.S. election? And although the Biden administration has reportedly won assurances from Israel that they will not attack Iranian nuclear or oil sites, of course, the implications of this would be enormous. If you could respond to that and how you think the Biden administration would respond in the event that Israel does attack Iran?

JOSH PAUL: Well, so, let’s, first of all, remember that the Biden administration also won assurances from Israel back in April that it would conduct itself in accordance with international humanitarian law and not restrict the flow of humanitarian assistance in Gaza. So, I’m not sure how much assurances from Israel at this point are worth or how credibly they can be taken.

That said, I think that one of the things that is empowering Prime Minister Netanyahu in this situation is his knowledge that America has Israel’s back, that no matter what Israel does — you know, we have deployed now a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, a THAAD system, which is our most capable and most expensive air defense system, to Israel. We have deployed several squadrons of U.S. fighter jets. We have deployed U.S. Navy ships. And I think that the problem there is that we create for Prime Minister Netanyahu this ability to escalate without concern over repercussions, and indeed, if anything, a certain attraction, one can imagine, to him of getting America involved in a conflict with Iran that he has long craved. So I think these are indeed very dangerous times, particularly as we lead into a U.S. election here.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Josh, A New Policy, the name of your new organization — A New Policy’s website says the United States policy in the Middle East should comply with American laws, reflect American values, advance peace, and peace and prosperity for all Americans. Are you saying now that the U.S. is breaking U.S. law?

JOSH PAUL: So, not only am I saying that the U.S. is breaking U.S. law, but I’ve actually heard, as have others who I’m working with, from members of Congress, behind closed doors, who will say, “We believe that what Israel is doing with our weapons amounts to war crimes, but we won’t say that publicly.” What A New Policy’s mission ultimately is, as Tariq Habash said today in the magazine Semafor, is to change that, is to fix that, is to make it so that U.S. elected officials can vote in accordance with their voters’ preferences, with their constituents’ interests, with American interests, with American values and with American law. We need to remove these structural roadblocks and these financial, frankly, roadblocks to our democracy and to the enforcement of our laws. So, if all of your listeners or viewers would like to visit, we are at www.anewpolicy.org, and happy to continue the conversation there, as well.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thanks so much, Josh Paul, former director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department. He resigned in protest last year. He has just launched a lobbying group called A New Policy.” Thanks so much for joining us.

Coming up, we’ll look at Israel’s threats to launch retaliatory strikes against Iran as fears grow of a broader regional war.