Two US government agencies allegedly claimed that the state of Israel was preventing US humanitarian aid from reaching the people of Gaza, only days before the Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Israel indeed isn’t.

The UN has warned that millions of people in Gaza are already living in a state close to famine, and humanitarian support has hampered access to water, baby milk, and medicinal food, such as soap. The Gaza Health Ministry has often claimed its stock was critically low throughout supply and fuel.

The US informant USAID affirmed that the Israeli armed forces denied the delivery of food and essential medicines to Gaza, as stated in a memo addressed to Mr Blinken at the beginning of this year. The refugee bureau of the State Department also seems to have come to a similar conclusion as aforementioned, and it forwarded its stance to the diplomats in the same month, ProPublica said on Tuesday.

However, Mr Blinken wrote to Congress days later: “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is preventing or inhibiting the supply or delivery of the US humanitarian aid.”

What you’ll learn from ProPublica’s report is that certain parts of the US government do think that Israel is holding up US aid to the Palestinian territory and that Mr Blinken had been informed of such thinking.

It also indicates that he suppressed what could have been a violation of US law that prohibits the provision of weapons in countries where the targeted communities fail to receive the requisite American aid.

ProPublica said it received the memorandums, documented evidence, and emails from USAID and the State Department’s PRM.

The agencies mentioned the Foreign Assistance Act, with clause 620I, designed to make allies and beneficiaries of American military aid allow assistance to pass through.

One email showed an interaction where PRM bureau assistant secretary Julieta Valls Noyes answered “yes” to a question by the State Department’s legal office asking: “Has PRM claimed that 620I has been activated for Israel?”

According to ProPublica, USAID provided cases of humanitarian aid workers being killed, shelling of medical vehicles and hospitals, enabling disruption of the aid operation, and withholding food and medicine deliveries at crossing points.

Although Mr Blinken said Israel is not denying access to supplies, President Joe Biden and his administration both privately and publicly pressed Israel to provide more humanitarian shipments to Gaza.

Israel has at some time complied by opening border crossing, but humanitarian aid operatives have been attacked while performing their duties despite Israeli efforts at deconfliction.

Surprisingly, the National Security Memorandum was released in May, and the State Department said that it probably violated international humanitarian law using US-produced weapons in Gaza but also stated that the ‘provision of defense articles’ to Israel can remain. And the US has been supplying millions of dollars worth of military weapons to Israel over the conflict in Gaza.

However, unlike Mr. Blinken’s comments and the memorandum’s conclusion of Israel’s nonresponsibility, the United States still has to seek other means to deliver help to Gaza, such as airdrop of supplies and a failed, brief marine convoy.

Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders put forward a piece of legislation, some sort of bid to prevent military shipments to Israel due to its conduct interfering with the delivery of humanitarian aid by the US that violates international law.