Thread by @JeremyKonyndyk

There are no words to adequately convey the rage heartbreak of the Israeli govt murdering 7 aid workers.

First and foremost, my deepest condolences and full solidarity with @WCKitchen, @chefjoseandres, and the families of the 7 heroes who gave their lives feeding Gazans.

https://twitter.com/WCKitchen/status/1775027258249359451

These were targeted hits on clearly marked humanitarian vehicles whose movement had been cleared with the IDF.

Clearly forbidden under international law. A total violation of IDF's legal obligation to distinguish non-mil objects and protect aid workers.

https://x.com/reider/status/1775115913567547547?s=20

This is not just a grave IHL violation, it is a clear war crime. Part of a clear pattern of IDF striking humanitarians routinely since early in the war, while refusing refused repeated calls to set up a functional deconfliction system that would actually protect humanitarians.

Humanitarians have spent SIX MONTHS telling anyone who would listen that deconfliction is broken. President Biden and his senior officials know it. But they've done little beyond scold the Israelis over it while continuing to send weapons.

This is the inevitable result.

I was in Ukraine recently and talked to aid groups about how deconfliction works there. They said that Russia has been consistent about not striking deconflicted aid operations; sometimes to the point of calling to ask if convoys have departed an area before they resume attacks.

I say this not to defend Russia - their IHL track record is horrible. And yet even they are managing to make aid deconfliction work in Ukraine, even as they continue committing countless other war crimes there.

So there is NO REASON that Israel couldn't have fixed this in the past six months. They simply didn't want to. Which made it inevitable a day like this would come.

Netanyahu now knows he has a political problem and he's already trying to spin this as a one-off accident or aberration.

It is not. It is just the latest in a long pattern of strikes and close calls on humanitarian movements and facilities. bbc.com/news/live/worl…

You don't strike a deconflicted convoy repeatedly, hitting three vehicles in succession over the course of a kilometer of road, by accident.

You do that by fostering a military culture that treats Gaza as a free fire zone with total impunity for gross attacks on civilians.

The IDF has killed 173 UNRWA staff since Oct and repeatedly struck UNRWA humanitarian facilities.

The IDF has also targeted an IRC staff residence using a US plane and US bomb: rescue.org/press-release/…

And destroyed the offices of Humanity and Inclusion: hi.org/en/news/hi-off…

And killed a @USAID contractor and his young family:

https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1735996676291125657?s=20

And struck an @MSF shelter *in the IDF-designated Mawasi "safe zone"* msf.org/msf-strongly-c…

And struck an IDF-cleared UN food convoy *while it was being held at an IDF checkpoint* edition.cnn.com/2024/02/21/mid…

And there are others. None have been credibly investigated, much less explained, by the IDF.

As attacks keep happening, the Biden admin keeps issuing boilerplate about how "Israel needs to do more" rather than acknowledge the reality of what this pattern says about IDF behavior.

There were 6 months to fix this deconfliction debacle. The failure to do so was not accidental.

Israel didn't see it as a problem. And Biden didn't think that merited rethinking US support for this war.

And now 7 aid workers are dead as a result.

Brief addendum

https://x.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1775198849336004851?s=20