J.E. Dyer: Two pings on strike that killed food-aid workers in Gaza

Tragedy strikes.

J.E. Dyer, theoptimisticconservative     April 2, 2024

The first food delivery in March 2024 from World Central Kitchen in the Meals-on-Keels program, floating toward the jetty being newly constructed just south of the Gaza City Port.  Image: IDF via Times of Israel.

This will be two short pings.  The set-up is that PM Netanyahu has acknowledged the IDF role in the strike on 1 April, in which seven aid workers for World Central Kitchen (WCK), traveling in a group of two armored vehicles and one soft-skin vehicle in central Gaza, were tragically killed in an air strike.

WCK founder José Andrés is quoted as saying the trip had been deconflicted with the IDF, which would be expected after Israel said last month that it would ensure secure conditions for the food deliveries.  WCK, which transports food from a collection point in Cyprus, is working through the jetty hastily built off Gaza, just south of the existing jetty of the Gaza City port.  The delivery mechanics at the jetty look inconvenient and unwieldy; basically, small barges are being towed to the new jetty through the choppy, unsheltered waters of the Eastern Mediterranean just off the coast.  Barges are hard enough to deal with on inland rivers, as a recent barge-bridge collision on the Arkansas River in Oklahoma reminds us.  It doesn’t get easier on the open sea.

We can, of course, feel awful about the lives lost in this event.  Netanyahu says it is under investigation and there will be a full accounting.

The ping that needs to be remembered is the first one.

Ping One: Mission creep behind the aid deliveries

I’ve reiterated several times that multi-party aid schemes, in which delivery participants and facilities proliferate, will inevitably complicate and affect the IDF’s freedom of operation in Gaza.

In fact, something that needs to be stressed is that a great deal of aid is in fact reaching Gaza.  This is aid coming from the longstanding, original sources:  the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), NGOs such as Save the Children.  The aid from this flow remains abundant; it comes in by truck and is security-processed efficiently by Israel.  The latest report from Israeli authorities on the amount of aid entering Gaza is here.

Israel is already ensuring that aid gets through.  As entry points are added on the coast, the security picture for aid delivery becomes more complex.

Israel has little choice other than cooperating with the new contestants in the humanitarian aid effort, if the IDF is to keep some kind of order in Gaza and prevent Hamas from using the newly-arrived participants to sow more chaos.

And a key reason it must be the IDF is that there are outside actors seeking to establish a foothold in Gaza under the guise of “security for humanitarian aid.”  This came out most notoriously just after President Biden announced the U.S. project to put up a temporary pier off the coast.

Latest on progress of the U.S. Army support vessels coming from Virginia.

Qatar, it turned out, is to be contracted to provide services ashore for the U.S. pier.  This would include logistics and security for the aid distribution in Gaza.

Israel can hardly regard such a prospect with a neutral eye.  It’s destabilizing enough to have entry points for outside parties controlled by Israel (e.g., the Erez border crossing).  When there are landing points on the coast and nation-sponsored third parties using them, the third parties’ ability would expand quickly to impede and demand “deconfliction” of IDF operations.

We’re seeing the initial signs of that with the WCK incident.  The need for deconfliction is to be expected; what need not happen, but is guaranteed to, is the imperative for deconfliction and the mechanisms set up for it becoming the basis for grander schemes to administer Gaza through outside parties.

We already know that such schemes are envisioned.  The U.S. is reportedly pondering the formation of a “peacekeeping” force to take the reins in Gaza.  The implicit timing of this would be before, and as a substitute for, a final IDF push in Rafah to clear Hamas out entirely.

U.S. officials including Biden, Jake Sullivan, and Anthony Blinken have all emphasized in recent statements that they want to avert an Israeli operation in Rafah.  The official U.S. posture is also that the only acceptable end-state to the Gaza war is a Palestinian Arab state, or a “two-state solution,” in which Gaza and the Judea/Samaria territories would become the new state.

Note that Biden, in his statement on the incident, hammers the “insufficient deconfliction” theme, as well as going beyond the WCK incident to demand an immediate ceasefire.

Indeed, just before the WCK incident, the U.S.-Israel strategic consultation group conferred on the IDF’s future plans in Gaza, and according to media reporting, American participants emphasized that they wanted Israel to desist from plans to enter Rafah.  The U.S. readouts on the discussions were not this specific, but did indicate U.S. reservations about the preparations for Rafah.

Comments from American officials after the airstrike have stressed U.S. support for Israel’s right to self-defense and security.

But the overall panorama of policy continues to distinguish between that and endorsing a Rafah operation.  Only an IDF operation in Rafah would drive Hamas out sufficiently for Israel’s security; a “peacekeeping” effort would quickly fail in that regard, and bog down in ways that ended up enabling Hamas, as UNIFIL’s presence in southern Lebanon has enabled Hezbollah.

Israel wants to decisively clear Hamas from Gaza, and every entrance of third parties that can come and go in Gaza without using passage points controlled by Israel creates more pretexts for interference with that Israeli objective.

Events like the WCK incident are ideally suited for making a third-party “peacekeeping” force seem like a good idea to the rest of the world.  They will be used in such a way.

Ping Two:  Aid living dangerously

This ping will be very short, as it’s not clear from what we know how much should be made of it.  But it should be noted.

The dateline for reporting, and the general location of the reported strike on the WCK aid convoy, was Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.  According to the reports, the convoy drove out from a warehouse where WCK aid is being stored after it is brought ashore.

The WCK jetty is some distance to the north, so the trek to storage in Deir al-Balah is noteworthy.

Moreover, Deir al-Balah is in fact a very active area for the IDF’s current operations against Hamas (see also here, here, here.  There’s a lot more; searches should turn up whatever evidence you require).  I haven’t seen a specific location for the warehouse, but there is a growing concentration of media, NGOs, and undoubtedly Hamas operatives near the Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah – a recent consequence of the IDF’s success in shaking hundreds of Hamas operatives out of Al-Shifa hospital up north in Gaza City.

It appears the use of Deir al-Balah as a staging point for aid relates to the city’s employment as a center for media and other outside agencies, including UNRWA.  Hamas had a headquarters there at the start of the war, and although a senior commander was killed by the IDF there in November 2023, there still seem to be Hamas and Hamas infrastructure being targeted.  There was a major bombing on 31 March, just before the WCK incident, and a number of strikes in the preceding two months.

Video from one recent strike appears to have targeted significant hard-built infrastructure, as indicated by the telltale thick smoke low to the ground, and broad pattern of explosions showing no fuel or ignitable ammunition components.

Other recent strikes:

In other words, WCK could have chosen a safer place as a hub for aid distribution.  One line of thought would be that Deir al-Balah was chosen because of its existing links to the usual-suspect outside parties in Gaza.  We needn’t dismiss that as a factor.

But it does raise questions about the priority of the aid delivery succeeding, versus something like the aid delivery being situated to be a new impediment to Israeli operations.  No competent analyst would dismiss that possibility; it takes emotion, not empirical integrity, to angrily discount it.

We need not insist on it either.  But it belongs in the mix of questions we’re looking for answers to.