The US government has created the “humanitarian maritime corridor,” also referred to as a humanitarian “pier”. However, the US government is simultaneously directly responsible for the famine, starvation, and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza that this humanitarian pier is supposed to alleviate. Specifically, U.S. financial and military assistance to Israel - including an extra $1 billion dollars in weapons that the Biden administration has promised to Israel this week - - coupled with the defunding of UNRWA and failure to hold Israel accountable to international law has created the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Despite rhetoric from U.S. officials claiming opposition to an invasion of Rafah, the U.S. has continued to supply funding and weapons to Israel. This hypocritical combination of funding Israel’s violence and directly displacing Palestinians to build the pier while using the pier to generate positive  publicity for the U.S. government  constitutes aid-washing and is ineffective in saving Palestinian lives. 

This comes on the heels of repeated evidence of Israel’s systemic targeting of aid and aid workers. Forensic Architecture released on May 17th an analysis that shows 80 separate attacks by Israel specifically targeting aid deliveries since January alone. More than 262 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including 193 UN workers, many of whom were Palestinian. An estimated 70% of Palestinians in North Gaza are at catastrophic risk of famine, and less than one-fifth of the required level of daily aid has been allowed into Gaza using the pre-existing land routes.

As such, Global Development for Palestine continues to call for action that will make a difference - an end to military assistance to Israel, demands for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and reinstatement of funding to UNRWA to provide assistance to Palestinians and ensure their legal status as refugees.

Experts who work directly in the global humanitarian assistance and international development have shared direct quotes and statements with Global Development for Palestine, including:

• “It’s not about humanitarian assistance. Aid is right across the border, and the US has all the leverage in the world to pressure Israel to allow aid in. The US is choosing not to, and instead spending millions in taxpayer dollars to distract and help protect the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.”

• “USAID is making a mockery out of all of us. The only real life-saving humanitarian support would be to use its power to demand Biden stop financing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Anything short of that is completely senseless and complicity in genocide. Maybe Samantha Powers should read her own book.”
  
  

• “Many of us in this sector have had numerous discussions, meetings, conferences, summits, etc. and have been engaged in creating frameworks, trainings, one-pagers, guides, and so much more on localization, inclusion, diversity, community-led programming, conflict prevention, etc. Why do you waste our time and yours if you use none of it when it matters, and instead create and continue to support one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time?”
  
  

• “I work in global development and humanitarian response and my entire career, I have had to count pennies. I have watched the organizations I work for being relentlessly tracked, audited and monitored for every dime of overhead spending, had to explain value for money or “bang for the buck” in every proposal, and explain over and over again why an intervention was cost effective. And yet, today I watch the US government try to take the most expensive and least effective route for delivering life-saving aid imaginable. There is a functioning road system that would allow for as many trucks as needed to deliver food, medicine and supplies into Gaza. Instead, the US government is opting for a publicity stunt. It’s made worse by the idea that there are people who have died lying in the rubble over which this publicity stunt pier was built, forcing aid workers to literally walk on the dead to get materials off this pier. I cannot imagine USAID being able to pass its own evaluation committee on a project as nonsensical as this.”

• “As someone who has worked in communities recovering from disasters, I am alarmed by this blatant example of a funding agency both funding the bombs and weapons that are killing my fellow aid colleagues, and then trying to suggest that we can make up with that by letting in a margin of the life saving food and medicine that a community's needs. In this case, Samantha Power is both the head of USAID and sits on the National Security Council, and so we can draw an explicit throughline between the delivery of weapons and the performance of aid through her.”
  
  

Global Development for Palestine  has also delivered a petition with over 5,000 signatures (including statement on gender-based violence) to international development policy makers around the world. A request for a response from Samantha Power and other key decision-makers at USAID was ignored and the agency refused to meet with the group.

For media inquiries, contact globaldev4palestine@gmail.com.