RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nothing better illustrates the perversity of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza conflict that, at the same time that Washington is limiting arms exports to Israel, the US is increasing its aid to the Palestinian Authority.

One of the key lessons that the US should have learned from Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and more than 250 taken captive and held as hostages in Gaza, is that aid donations made by foreign donors invariably end up being used to fund Palestinian terrorists.

Prior to October 7, key supporters of Hamas, such as Iran and Qatar, sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza, and claimed it was to be used for humanitarian purposes such as funding schools and hospitals.

Instead, it was used to build the formidable underground tunnel network Hamas constructed in Gaza that ultimately enabled it to carry out the worst terrorist attack Israel has suffered in its history.

Even though US President Joe Biden has finally decided to step aside from the presidential election contest in favour of Vice President Kamala Harris, his administration continues to sustain its policy of giving handouts to Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank without having any guarantees that the funds will be used for humanitarian purposes, and not to fund terror.

With awkward timing, the Biden administration announced its latest $100 million aid package for the Palestinians just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to leave for his visit to Washington this week.

A statement issued by USAID said the new funding was to assist the United Nations’ World Food Programme, as well as providing “logistics support for the safe and efficient delivery of lifesaving humanitarian aid across Gaza.” The US aid agency said the additional funding brings US contributions to the Palestinians since the war began to more than $774 million.

While aid officials blame Israel and the continuing war in Gaza for preventing the delivery of vital supplies from reaching Palestinian civilians, the real culprit is Hamas, which controls all the delivery networks. This means that much of the aid is diverted to those who support its terrorist operations.

One of the main reasons the US military was forced to abandon its efforts to deliver aid to Gaza using a specially-constructed floating pier off the Gaza coast was the difficulties it experienced getting aid to Palestinian civilians because Hamas controlled aid distribution networks.

Despite the mounting evidence that US aid supplies for the Palestinians, together with donations made by other Western nations, are failing to be used for their designated humanitarian purposes, the Biden administration appears determined to maintain its aid policy.

Moreover, reportedly neither Biden nor Harris came to greet Netanyahu at the airport in Washington, DC on July 22, and Harris, now a presidential candidate, will not be attending Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

Whether the decision to announce the new aid package was a deliberate snub to Netanyahu on the eve of his Washington visit, or simply bad timing, the fact that the White House appears more interested in shipping aid to the Palestinians — most likely the terrorists — than supporting America’s long-standing ally Israel, highlights the Biden administration’s dismaying priorities on the Gaza issue.

Netanyahu last month claimed that the Biden administration was deliberately withholding weapons supplies from Israel in an attempt to pressure Israel into accepting its latest ceasefire plan for Gaza — a plan that has so far been rejected by Hamas.

What did the Biden administration threaten Hamas with? Anything? Or just a reward for intransigence of $100 million more dollars from American taxpayers? The claim is that the money is being given to aid agencies to distribute to Palestinians in Gaza — but Hamas controls the distribution networks.

A ceasefire for Israel would mean leaving several battalions of Hamas terrorists in place, ready to regroup, re-arm and attack Israel again.

Addressing the Israeli cabinet one month, Netanyahu said there had been a “dramatic drop” in US weapons deliveries for Israel’s war effort in Gaza.

Netanyahu also told his cabinet that the drop had begun four months prior, without specifying which armaments, saying only that “certain items arrived sporadically but the munitions at large remained behind.”

The Biden administration, which has been pressing for a ceasefire since the start of the year, remains highly critical of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza, claiming it is responsible for too many civilian deaths.

Israel’s response is that Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, deliberately provides misleading figures about the civilian death toll as part of its propaganda war against the Israelis.

The main purpose of Netanyahu’s trip, during which he has been invited to give his first address to both houses of Congress since 2015, will be to revive support among US lawmakers for Israel’s military offensive, which is aimed at achieving the complete destruction of Hamas as a terrorist organisation, and, one hopes, to discuss the emerging nuclear weapons threat from Iran.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking of Iran’s nuclear programme, said on July 19:

“Instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, it is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that.”

Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2002, effectively called Israel, which is smaller than the state of New Jersey, a one-bomb country:

“[T]he use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.”

In trying to win back US support for Israel’s military campaign, Netanyahu clearly faces an uphill struggle, judging by the reception — or lack of it — he received on arrival in Washington this week.

This glacial reception seems a holdover from the Obama administration. Then President Barack Obama, seemed to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that expansionist Iran having nuclear bombs is a fine idea, so long as it is “not on my watch.” The “sunset clauses” in his unlawful 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) “nuclear deal” therefore allow Iran, after a few years, legitimately to have as many nuclear bombs as it can produce.

Obama reportedly loathed Netanyahu, apparently for being concerned that an Iran with nuclear bombs might present an existential threat not only to Israel, but also to its Arab neighbours in the region. In fact, Iran, its militias and its terrorist proxies, most recently the Houthis in Yemen, have, even without nuclear weapons, attacked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — as well as at least 150 recent attacks on US forces in the region (such as here and here) — presumably so Iran can have the Gulf all to itself.

Biden may have announced his intention to not seek re-election, but so long as his administration remains in power, there appears little prospect of any dramatic revision taking place to its deliberately icy — and potentially dangerous — attitude not only towards Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, but also its turning a blind eye toward Iran’s destabilizing nuclear weapons, possibly coming soon, with the missiles to deliver them to the Middle East, Europe, and — from Latin America and the Caribbean — to the United States.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph‘s Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.