Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the Senior Diplomatic Correspondent for HuffPost, based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at [email protected]. A native Pakistani, Akbar has reported from across the Muslim-majority world, Europe, Asia and the U.S.
As open fighting between two of the Middle East’s best-armed players worsens, more than a million Palestinian lives hang in the balance.
Rafah, the town in southern Gaza where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering, is the only section of the strip Israel has yet to invade its sweeping, hugely controversial campaign. Describing widespread anticipation of an Israeli ground invasion and “constant anxiety due to the ongoing airstrikes,” Ghada Alhaddad told HuffPost she has witnessed panicked civilians Rafah to try to return to other parts of Gaza, only to find little but wreckage there.
Seeking anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, a source at a humanitarian organization said they had little faith in the U.S. to moderate Israel’s approach to Rafah.“You just can’t look to the Biden administration for signals, because the Israelis have proven time and again that just because assurances are given to the U.S. side doesn’t mean they’re going to be held to them,” said the source.
Netanyahu and Israeli hardliners see PA rule in Gaza as unacceptable, casting the body as corrupt and Palestinian autonomy in the region as a “reward for terror,” but Neumann called it “the least bad option,” compared to Hamas.There’s a reason to be skeptical of how firm the U.S. will be on the PA and related American plans for the region: its track record.his career, and particularly since Oct. 7, Biden has prioritized backing Israel. Critics say this has made him unwilling to deploy U.S.
But Biden’s oft-stated resistance to a regional conflict could yet convince his team they must halt an Israeli offensive.“The administration has been pretty consistently holding the line on Rafah because they know it’s a game-changer,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy think tank. “Biden’s policy has been to try and keep the catastrophe contained within Gaza. It’s an indefensibly callous and dangerous policy, but they’ve been consistent about it.
On Friday, top White House Middle East official Brett McGurk told a public briefing with Jewish Americans there have been “pretty significant changes” in Israel’s treatment of aid — an assessment that was not shared by any of the aid workers HuffPost for this story.“We’re interested in outputs, not inputs, which to say is the lowering of malnutrition. ... We’re interested in no civilian casualties, we’re interested in no indiscriminate bombing.
UNICEF struggled to send fuel and food north from Rafah last week in convoys Ingram participated in, she said, as authorities delayed trucks in holding areas and directed them to a heavily congested route. Israeli officials also maintain extremely limited hours at the checkpoint separating southern Gaza from the north.
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