WASHINGTON — More than two months after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen in the Gaza Strip, the Biden administration has yet to offer its assessment of a preliminary Israeli investigation that determined the incident was a “serious error.”
White House officials have said privately for weeks that they are waiting for Israel to provide “baseline information” about the April attack before they can complete their investigation. A meeting with Israeli officials to discuss the additional details the U.S. has requested is expected in the coming weeks, but no date has been set, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.
“We continue to discuss this with the Israeli government,” one of the officials told NBC News.
The IDF released its initial assessment a few days after the April 1 attack, saying that the attack “should not have happened” and that those who authorized it were “confident that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives, not WCK personnel.” In a statement, the IDF said it was continuing to investigate what happened and would submit additional investigations for review.
The Biden administration's delay in assessing the Israeli investigation into the WCK attack comes as the U.S. again deferred to Israel over another deadly incident in Gaza, an airstrike that killed dozens of Palestinian civilians at the Rafah tent camp late last month.
“We'll see what the investigation uncovers,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the time. The White House has not said how long the investigation will take.
Following the attack on 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 killings of our WCK colleagues,” WCK said in a statement on April 5. “The IDF is unable to credibly investigate its own failures in Gaza.”
The Biden administration has not supported an independent investigation, with officials instead saying it must first complete its own assessment of the Israeli investigation. Administration officials were quick to point out that Israel has made some adjustments to its rules of operations based on the findings of the investigation into the WCK attack.
“Israel conducted an investigation, made its findings public and then made changes in response to its findings. We thought that was very important,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said last month.
After the April attacks, President Joe Biden threatened to put conditions on aid to Israel if it did not take concrete steps to better protect aid workers and innocent civilians. He delivered that message in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which Biden made clear that “U.S. policy on Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate actions in response to these measures.”
Jacob Flickinger, one of seven WCK employees killed in the April 1 attack, was a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen. The others were from Britain, Australia and Poland, and the driver was Palestinian. Biden said at the time that he was “outraged” by their deaths.
This week, WCK founder José Andrés was honored for his humanitarian work at a Washington gala to raise funds for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and delivered an emotional appeal for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Andrés choked up as he read the names of the seven colleagues who died in the attack. He noted that his organization was the first in Israel to provide food aid to survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and is still working in Gaza to help victims of the ongoing war.
After his remarks, Andres told NBC News that the number of aid trucks arriving in Gaza was only a fraction of what was needed.
During his State of the Union address in March, Biden vowed that U.S. forces would set up a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver more humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Pallets were hauled to shore over several weeks last month, but bad weather thwarted the plan and halted the project altogether.
The pier was reconnected to Gaza's shoreline on Friday, according to U.S. Central Command, and the Biden administration expects aid deliveries to resume within days. Administration officials have said they will initially aim to deliver 500,000 pounds to shore each day, then gradually increase that.
