Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Jul 26 6 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Netanyahu has used aid diversion claims as pretext for massive obstruction of aid to Gaza.

Now we learn the IDF had briefed his team that these claims were false (as aid groups have long argued).

This constitutes further evidence he is using starvation as a weapon of war.
🧵
Humanitarian groups have long denied that their aid is being diverted at any significant scale.

My organization dug into this last year and found no evidence for the Israeli govt claims. refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs…Image
Image
US envoy David Satterfield - a savvy, hard-nosed diplomat and no one's idea of a bleeding heart - has consistently said the same.
Reuters reported last week that an internal USG analysis had reached the same conclusion.

No evidence that Hamas was diverting a meaningful share of humanitarian aid.
reuters.com/world/middle-e…
And it turns out the Israeli military shared that assessment: the IDF concluded that the UN was effective at securely getting aid to Gazans and was *less* vulnerable to diversion than smaller aid groups.

The diversion claims were diametrically false, and Bibi's team knew it. Image
Image
So then why suppress a UN-led aid operation that was effectively feeding people with negligible diversion,

and replace it with a militarized GHF operation that delivers little aid but produces daily massacres of aid-seekers?

This only makes sense if starvation is the intent.

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More from @JeremyKonyndyk

Jul 24
As a longtime humanitarian who has battled famines and hunger crises, I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality.

A thread on famine momentum, famine response, and what it means for Gaza today.
The latest reporting shows telltale signs of rapidly accelerating mortality - the kind of classic famine scenario we know from places like Sudan or Somalia.

Barring a massive reversal of Israeli policy, there is a little standing in the way of total collapse.
Throughout last year Gaza ebbed and flowed at the brink of famine, but never passed the tipping point.

Israeli aid obstruction kept Palestinians perpetually underfed but always relented just enough to avoid mass hunger mortality, as we wrote last Sept:
refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs…Image
Read 14 tweets
Jun 4
For days, GHF and its defenders tried to "debunk" the massacre claims by arguing "but this didn't happen *at* the GHF sites."

As we know, the people killed were in the crowds walking long distances through IDF perimeters TO REACH THOSE VERY SITES.

Which GHF now...admits.
The whole episode says a lot about the sincerity of whoever is pulling the strings at GHF.

First instinct is to put out a gaslighting press release denying the massacre reports, while pretending that whatever happens outside their perimeter has nothing to do with them.
Only after *another* massacre (which they also initially try to debunk) does GHF belatedly acknowledge that...maybe...there are some issues with an aid model that forces huge crowds of hungry people to cross long distances and then clusters them along IDF force positions.
Read 4 tweets
May 27
Seasoned humanitarians do not operate this way because it's a terribly risky and ineffective way to deliver aid.

Quick 🧵 on what seems to have gone wrong, and why nothing about today's events was surprising.

(subtitle: humanitarians know stuff, actually)
One thing that relief workers learn early is that managing desperate crowds is TOUGH.

So you generally try to deliver aid in a way that avoids drawing more people than you can manage and serve at a given site.

More sites = smaller crowds = manageable distribution. Not this: Image
The GHF model is the total inverse of that.

Rather than dispersing people across many sites, GHF concentrates them at very few sites with very grandiose aspirations of serving huge numbers.

As evidenced by today's chaos, GHF had no plan for what that would mean in practice.
Read 15 tweets
May 9
"We will take your baby and deport you without her.”

Blockbuster new report from us @RefugeesIntl and our partner @humanrights1st documenting shocking stories of asylum seekers unlawfully disappeared, abused, and expelled by Trump's @CBP and @ICEgov.

Read on. 🧵 Image
Our teams interviewed numerous asylum seekers who have been unlawfully expelled from the US to Costa Rica, Panama, and their home countries (where they face real risk of persecution or torture, likely constituting refoulement).
We found a consistent pattern of government abuse and deception intended to subvert legal oversight and to deny people's rights.

Some of these accounts appear consistent with the practice of enforced disappearance under international law.
Read 17 tweets
May 4
Teachable moment here.

I don't love using the term "humanitarian principles" b/c it sounds like an ethical creed.

That's not what the principles are. They are fundamentally a *tool* to enable safe humanitarian access.

A tool refined by years of hard lessons.

Quick🧵
Saying something "contravenes humanitarian principles" rarely persuades non-humanitarians.

When I was in government, that approach never worked.

Instead I would argue for why supporting independent, neutral humanitarian action *stood the best chance of operational success.*
I see the principles as two pairs:

The *what*: hum'n action seeks to protect life (Humanity) on the basis of need alone (Impartiality).

The *how*: hum'n action does not take sides in a conflict (Neutrality) and operates apart from political & military objectives (Independence) Image
Read 10 tweets
Apr 24
More an amputation than a major re-organization.

The core structure of @StateDept remains intact and mostly unchanged.

But they amputate the US government's foreign aid capacity and eviscerate other soft-power tools.

A 🧵
Here's a cross-walk of the prior State org chart to the new one released by Rubio (links to both below).

🟥 items appear to be fully eliminated.

🟨 items are retained but reshuffled

🟩items are new to the org chart

New: state.gov/wp-content/upl…
Old: 2021-2025.state.gov/department-of-… Image
Image
DepSecs unchanged.

5 of the 6 undersecretaries unchanged; 1 eliminated and replaced by a revising the foreign assistance budget director (Marocco's old job).

Primacy of the regional bureaus is preserved/reinforced.

No cuts announced to overseas posts.
Read 17 tweets

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