According to US officials and workers from the agency-funded humanitarian group, the Trump administration's efforts to reduce the US international development agency will fund food, tents and treatment for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza puts it at risk.
Authorities said the threat to supply chain assistance risks destabilizing the vulnerable ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. This is subject to 4,200 aid to the territory and weekly entry of commercial trucks.
With almost all USAID staff scheduled to take administrative leave by Friday night, we will sign off with unpaid payments to our partners of our Gaza ground agency, and audit hundreds of millions of dollars. Only the officials of the clench will remain. An alarm about how these groups fund their operations.
According to an internal agency email reviewed by the New York Times, out of the agency's more than 200 officials, only 21 remain to manage the entire portfolio of the region. Each year, the team organising emergency aid supply in dozens of crisis zones around the world has only one in Gaza, making it from over 1,000 to just 70 staff members.
This would slow or prevent delivery of food packages to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, tents, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits and treatment, according to three officials and one aid worker. It is expected. All four spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not permitted to speak to news media.
Although the aid agencies are not operated within Gaza, the United Nations says that since the war began in October 2023, it has provided about $1 billion in aid to the ground to international aid groups on the ground. The hundreds of millions of dollars have not yet been paid and could never be transferred to UN agencies or other major aid organizations now, three officials said.
“They are already making the fragile ceasefire even more vulnerable,” said Dave Harden, former USAID mission director in Gaza and West Bank of Israeli tribes. “The life-saving assistance to Gaza will be confusing.”
The State Department, which oversees the aid agencies, declined to comment. The Jerusalem agency director introduced the reporter to the USAID Press department but did not respond to requests for comment. It was unclear if it was still working.
The World Food Programme, the International Organization for Immigration and the International Health Corps, declined to comment that they are distributing aid or operating projects in Gaza, which is all USAID-funded.
In a television interview this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the move was an attempt to prevent “disobedience” by non-cooperative workers “not to remove foreign aid.”
The Trump administration says agents will waste taxpayer money on foreign programs that do little to Americans and have little focus.
Rubio said that agency employees “receive taxpayer money and use it as a global charity, whether it is in national interest or not.”
An official interviewed for the article said aid to Gaza is a clear example of how institutional work is supporting its work to further promote President Trump's foreign policy goals. Ta. He repeatedly called for an extension of the ceasefire. This depends in part on the smooth flow of aid.
The virtual collapse of USAID is expected to remove important forms of surveillance regarding its assistance provision. The agency is planning to fire officials who monitor the distribution of supplies within the territory, according to three officials, and the United States will assess who controls and receives aid within Hamas-run areas. He said it's getting more difficult.
Deputy officials who previously coordinated between Israeli forces, Egyptian government, the United Nations and civil aid groups also said that various parties were able to troubleshoot supply chain issues and soldiers accidentally fire on aid convoys. It may help prevent it. Israeli officials spoke about the conditions of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, affirmed the importance of the role of coordinating agencies, and said it was unclear which agencies would intervene to fill it.
Several aid and development programs in the Gaza and the West Bank have already been suspended or restricted after freezing in January with most of the USAID programs and thousands of workers fired or stopped. By the beginning of this week, more than half of the roughly 50 staff working on the Gaza response in Jerusalem and Washington have already been on leave or have ended their contracts.
Three US officials said they included USAID representatives who worked in the Israeli military control room in Tel Aviv, helping to coordinate between the military and aid groups in Gaza.
Fundraising freezes have already stopped tens of millions of dollars allocated to Gaza, including water infrastructure, mobile hospital units and psychological assistance programs, according to one U.S. official.
Among the groups affected were the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based medical aid group funded by USAID, which runs two large field hospitals in Gaza. As a result, the group may not be able to maintain an emergency room that treats up to 200 patients a day, an outpatient department that serves up to 2,000 people a day, and a birth unit that can no longer maintain a He said there is. Baby for the day.
In a statement, Anera, a Washington-based aid group, said in a statement that the freeze on a USID grant worth $50 million will suspend work on the program to restore decimated health services in Gaza. He said he was forced.
Tens of millions of dollars have also been frozen for projects in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, putting the major funds of several hospitals President Biden has committed to maintain during his 2022 visit to the region It's exposed.
Ronen Bergman contributed to the report from Tel Aviv.
