"The success of the Gaza cease-fire-which Trump has called perhaps "the greatest deal" of any he's made-depends on the United States' continued involvement. Top U.S. officials, including Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have flown to Israel, trying to shore up the cease-fire. (Israeli media, The Wall Street Journal reports, have taken to calling the visits "Bibisitting.") On the immediate agenda is "giving people some food and medicine," Vance said during a press conference last week."
"Faced with humanitarian crises in the past, the White House could lean on USAID's experience with global aid and its expertise in postwar recovery. But since DOGE was unleashed on the U.S. government, that agency essentially no longer exists. Work on aid in Gaza was not exempt, former and current aid workers told me: The Trump administration fired people actively working on this conflict, and the State Department now must figure out, largely on the fly, how to help aid reach Gaza."
Immediately after Hamas and Israel agreed to the first phase of a cease-fire, food and medical supplies were meant to flow into the Gaza Strip, but the influx did not go as planned and the flow of aid remains clogged. Some food, fuel, medical supplies, and other resources are moving, yet distribution is constrained. Continued U.S. involvement is central to sustaining the cease-fire, prompting visits by senior officials to coordinate relief. Years of U.S. aid staffing cuts and recent firings have diminished USAID capacity, leaving the State Department to improvise delivery and recovery efforts.
Read at The Atlantic
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