When Biden announced that he was promising $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank, it was immediately clear to anyone with common sense that this money would end up in the hands of Hamas and not used for humanitarian purposes.
The Biden administration insists there will be safeguards in place to prevent this from happening, but no one really believes it will work—not even the pro-Biden CNN.
On Wednesday’s “Laura Coates Live,” CNN correspondent Hadas Gold and CNN military analyst Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.) both agreed that preventing humanitarian aid from being seized by Hamas in Gaza would be extremely difficult because there are no mechanisms in place to ensure how the aid is distributed and used.
“Just, in hearing what he had to say about the conditions, really, of being in compliance or going along with what President Biden has said, the conditions about hostages being released, the ideas of how to ensure that the aid is not going to be essentially taken and siphoned off by Hamas. Is it realistic to think that could actually be a condition that could be met before aid gets there?” host Laura Coates asked.
“Well, I think it’s possible, but there’s no peacekeeping mechanisms. There are no troops on the ground to keep anybody away from these stores, any mechanism to prevent Hamas from going after these things,” Leighton replied. “So, it’s a bit touchy, and I think there are — because there are no mechanisms of enforcement, I think it’s going to be a bit of a problem, Laura.”
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“But he mentioned the international community. Obviously, he seemed to be imploring vigilance from just outside of Israel as well,” Coates pointed out. “Is there a collective way to get this done?”
“I think the only mechanism right now would be the United Nations, who does have a presence there. But it will be really difficult to do that in a time of war,” Gold answered. “I don’t know how you can actually do these checks in the correct way. Now, Egypt could do it on their end, but then there is the concern of where this aid will go to. Now, in Israel’s mind, they are doing this operation to completely eliminate Hamas. So, in a way, if they can go in and eliminate Hamas the way they think they need to do so, then that aid would essentially have nowhere to go to be administered by Hamas, if they no longer exist, if Israel’s successful.”
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