WASHINGTON — More than two months after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers at the World Central Kitchen in Gaza, the Biden administration has still not issued a review of Israel’s preliminary investigation that found the incident was a “serious mistake.”
White House officials have said privately for weeks that they are waiting for Israel to provide “underlying information” about the April strike, and that without it they cannot complete the review. A meeting with Israeli officials to discuss the additional details the U.S. has requested should take place sometime in the next few weeks, but no date has yet been set, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.
“We continue to engage with the Israeli government about this,” one of the officials told NBC News.
The Israeli military published an initial assessment a few days after the April 1 attack that found the attack “should not have happened” and said those who approved the action were “confident that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives and not on WCK employees.” The IDF continues to investigate what happened and will submit an additional investigation for review, the IDF said in a statement.
The Biden administration’s delay in conducting an assessment of Israel’s investigation into the WCK attack comes as the US again defers to Israel over another deadly incident in Gaza — an airstrike that killed dozens of Palestinian civilians late last month a tent camp in Rafah. .
“Let’s see what the investigation turns out,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the time. The White House has not said how long that investigation will take.
In the wake of the strike against WCK aid workers, the group called for an independent investigation into the deadly attack.
“We demand the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the murders of our WCK colleagues,” WCK said in a statement on April 5. “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failures in Gaza.”
The Biden administration has not approved an independent investigation, but officials have said its own review of the Israeli probe must be completed first. Administration officials have been quick to point out that Israel has made some adjustments to its operating rules based on findings from its investigation into the WCK attack.
“Israel conducted an investigation and presented those findings publicly, and then made changes in response to those findings, which we thought were very important that they did,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said last month.
After the strike in April, President Joe Biden threatened to support Israel if the country did not take concrete steps to better protect aid workers and innocent civilians. He delivered that message in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which Biden “made it clear that U.S. policy on Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”
One of the seven WCK employees killed in the April 1 attack, Jacob Flickinger, was a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen. Others came from Britain, Australia and Poland, along with a Palestinian driver. Biden said at the time that he was “outraged” by their deaths.
This week, WCK founder Jose Andres was honored for his humanitarian efforts at a Washington Gala to raise money for the United Nations refugee agency, where he made an emotional appeal for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Andres choked up as he listed the names of his seven colleagues who died in the attack. He noted that the aid group was the first to respond in Israel with food for survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and has been working in Gaza to help victims of the ongoing war.
Following his comments, Andres told NBC News that the number of aid trucks entering Gaza is only a fraction of what is needed.
Biden pledged in his State of the Union address in March to set up a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza for the US military to help get more humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Pallets were transferred to shore for several weeks last month before being derailed by rough weather, halting the project completely.
The pier was reattached to the beach in Gaza on Friday, according to the US Central Command, and the Biden administration expects aid deliveries to resume in the coming days. The goal will be to initially move 500,000 pounds across the beach daily and then grow that over time, state officials say.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
