JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The war in Gaza is approaching the two-year mark. As it does, Israel continues to launch new attacks on a territory that's already in ruins, and the humanitarian situation for Gaza's Palestinian residents continues to worsen. A team of NPR reporters has been focusing on one question - how did we get here? They've been talking to several former senior officials in the Biden administration, all directly involved in shaping U.S. policy on Israel's war in Gaza when the conflict began. And I'm joined now by two of our reporters on this story, NPR's Tom Bowman and Kat Lonsdorf. Hi to both of you.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hello.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey.
SUMMERS: If you could, just start by telling us why you wanted to talk to former officials from the previous administration.
BOWMAN: Well, Juana, we started out with a simple question - how did we get to this point in Gaza? Famine has been declared. And, of course, this all started in the Biden administration, the war in Gaza. Now, at this point, Palestinians are now dying from malnutrition, according to health officials there. And we wanted to learn more about what role the U.S., as Israel's strongest ally, had in trying to get aid into Gaza to alleviate that crisis.
LONSDORF: Yeah, so we, along with our colleague Fatma Tanis, talked to people who were senior officials across the Biden administration and asked them to take us into the rooms where the decisions around U.S. policy toward Israel's war in Gaza were being made from the beginning. And they described strong, sometimes bitter arguments within the administration, with some officials saying not enough was being done to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow more aid into Gaza. Most of these people agreed to only speak with us without their names being used. You know, these were sensitive conversations. And these people were really grappling with the decisions that were made, wondering if they did enough or if they could have done more.
SUMMERS: What were you hearing from them specifically?
BOWMAN: Well, again, there were very tough and intense discussions. One person we spoke with was David Satterfield. Now, he was a Biden administration special envoy for Middle East humanitarian efforts, appointed just days into the war. And he said that he and other senior officials were asked constantly if they were doing enough, and it's something they still ask themselves.
DAVID SATTERFIELD: Our answer is, we're not doing enough. But we have prevented famine and starvation. And while that may be a low bar, that is not an insignificant achievement.
BOWMAN: This is something we heard, Juana, from a lot of the people we spoke with, basically saying, by definition, we didn't do enough, but we made a difference, and it could have been worse. And, of course, now it is.
LONSDORF: But, you know, there were others who said that that's just not the standard by which to measure success in a humanitarian catastrophe, like Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, who was putting pressure on the Biden administration from the early days of the war to do more. Here's what he told us.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: The Biden administration was totally feckless when it came to holding the Netanyahu government to the standard of American law and the standards that we claim to apply to every other country in the world.
LONSDORF: One former Biden era official told me, quote, "none of us were ever, ever satisfied. It was the most heartbreaking work ever, and we never got aid in in any amounts that was sufficient."
SUMMERS: Interesting. OK, I want to back up, if we can, a bit. Let's talk about the early days of the conflict when Israel was reeling from the Hamas-led October 7 attacks back in 2023 which started this war. Israel imposed a complete siege or blockade on Gaza in the days after. There was no food, no water, no fuel. What was happening behind the scenes in those weeks and months?
LONSDORF: Yeah, I mean, remember, October 7 was the deadliest attack in Israel's history. And Biden made his support for Israel very clear afterward, saying it had the right to defend itself. And at the same time, Israel imposed that siege on Gaza. You know, that's an enclave that is completely walled off, totally dependent on Israel to allow goods in and out. So this was a really difficult situation from a humanitarian aid perspective from Day 1.
BOWMAN: And also, you know, we heard from former senior officials who traveled to Israel around the time, and they told us that the humanitarian assistance component of the war was not well thought out. Some told us there was essentially no humanitarian plan and the military mission was always paramount. And looking back, some officials told us the U.S. didn't push Israel hard enough on that. And many of the people we talked to spoke about how the U.S. was reluctant to pressure Israel. Biden was very focused on the rightness of Israel's war. And there was a real sense at the time that Israel was being attacked from multiple fronts.
SUMMERS: It sounds like you really got an understanding of what it was like behind the scenes in the Biden administration for some really dramatic and difficult months. Can you just describe that a bit for us?
LONSDORF: Yeah, everyone we talk to stressed just how hard everyone was working on this issue. I mean, this was round-the-clock up to the highest level, even often the president himself making phone calls to the Israelis constantly. Essentially, everyone became desk officers, focusing on real specific details - you know, spending hours getting the Israelis to open a specific crossing or turn back on one specific water pipe. And officials told us that this meant that the U.S. was often bogged down in these details and phone calls, sometimes losing the bigger picture of the humanitarian catastrophe. This all led to a lot of frustration with Israel within the administration - you know, heated arguments between senior U.S. officials and their Israeli counterparts, trying to get movement of aid.
SUMMERS: I remember a time when the humanitarian situation in Gaza was addressed very publicly here in the U.S., and that was during Biden's State of the Union speech back in March of 2024. And in the speech, he announced that the U.S. would be building a military pier to deliver aid off the coast of Gaza. Tell us about the conversations around that.
LONSDORF: Yeah, right. You know, at this point, aid groups in Gaza were sounding the alarm bells about an impending catastrophe there, and Israel was still not letting in nearly enough aid through the land crossings. So the U.S. first started airdrops and then proposed that pier, which had all sorts of problems and only ended up operating for about 20 days total. One former official told us, quote, "we were in Hail Mary mode." You know, many of the officials we talked to defended those decisions. Others argued that they ignored the strongest tool the U.S. had in its toolbox, which is withholding U.S. military assistance from Israel.
SUMMERS: Right. I mean, the kind of elephant in the room behind all of this and all U.S. policy toward Israel is the large amount of military aid...
LONSDORF: Right.
SUMMERS: ...That the U.S. provides to Israel.
LONSDORF: Right.
BOWMAN: No, that's right. And looking back, some officials are still wondering, should we have halted all military assistance? Would that have pressured Israel to open more aid routes? Now, the Biden administration did withhold, remember, 2,000-pound bombs for a time. So could a larger arms halt have changed anything? But the Israelis were pretty blunt in the meetings with U.S. officials when humanitarian concerns were raised, basically saying, if you withhold arms, we'll just go it alone.
SUMMERS: I want to end by bringing this back to now, when famine has been declared in Gaza. The situation has just gotten so much worse in recent months. How has the Trump administration handled the humanitarian crisis there?
BOWMAN: Well, now the U.S. under the Trump administration largely seems to be allowing Israel to do what it wants. Aid groups on the ground told us that the U.S. is no longer exerting the same kind of consistent, round-the-clock pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza as it did under the Biden administration. We reached out to the White House for this story. A spokesperson replied saying, in part, that Trump, quote, "wants to ensure the people of Gaza are fed."
LONSDORF: But, you know, regardless of the administration, one former senior U.S. official told us that they thought the tragedy of Gaza, with a humanitarian crisis that has played out for almost two years now, has fundamentally compromised American global standing. They said, quote, "it's a stain which everyone in the world sees, even if we don't."
SUMMERS: That was NPR's Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman talking about reporting they did along with NPR's Fatma Tanis. Thanks to both of you.
LONSDORF: Thank you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
SUMMERS: And there is so much more to their reporting that we could not get into here. If you want to read their story in full, go to npr.org.
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