About three years after the October 7, 2023, after the genocide in Gaza, staff members of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) warned senior officials in the Joe Biden administration that northern Gaza had descended into what they described as an “apocalyptic wasteland.” The warning, which highlighted acute shortages of food and humanitarian aid, was contained in an internal memo that was later blocked from wide circulation within the US government.
Three former US officials told Reuters that the descriptions emerging from Gaza were unusually graphic and, had they been shared more broadly, were likely to have drawn the attention of senior policymakers. An internal USAID draft prepared in 2024 documented the findings of a two-part United Nations humanitarian fact-finding mission conducted in January and February.
According to the UN staff involved in the mission, scenes on the ground included human bones strewn along roads, bodies left inside abandoned vehicles, and what they described as “catastrophic human needs,” particularly the lack of food and access to safe drinking water. However, Reuters reported that the then US ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, along with his deputy Stephanie Hallett, prevented the message from being widely disseminated across government departments.
The memo was one of five such internal messages sent during the first half of 2024, each documenting the rapid collapse of health services, sanitation systems and food supplies, as well as a breakdown of social order in Gaza. Former officials said broader circulation of these assessments could have intensified scrutiny of Biden’s National Security Memorandum, which authorised continued US military and intelligence support to Israel while requiring assurances of compliance with international law.
US embassy officials in Jerusalem exercised oversight over most diplomatic cables related to Gaza, including those originating from other countries. Andrew Hall, who served as a crisis operations specialist with USAID at the time, said that while diplomatic cables were not the sole channel for conveying humanitarian information, their approval would have amounted to a formal acknowledgement of conditions on the ground. “They would have represented an acknowledgement by the ambassador of the reality of the situation in Gaza,” Hall said.
Despite the internal restrictions, senior US officials were aware of the deteriorating situation in northern Gaza through briefings from the National Security Council, even as international aid organisations warned of an impending famine. In February 2024, Biden publicly acknowledged the crisis, telling reporters that “a lot of innocent people are starving” and describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as “over the top.”
In contrast, a separate internal cable on Gaza’s food insecurity was approved for wider circulation in January 2024 and was reportedly included in the President’s Daily Brief. That assessment focused on famine risks in northern Gaza and the likelihood of acute food insecurity spreading across other parts of the Strip due to severely limited food deliveries.
According to Reuters, the cable was among the earliest comprehensive US government assessments detailing conditions inside Gaza, including rising food insecurity in the southern regions of the enclave.
