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Biden Names New Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues

Internally displaced Palestinians, who fled their homes due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, take shelter near the border with Egypt, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 20 April 2024. EPA/HAITHAM IMAD
Internally displaced Palestinians, who fled their homes due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, take shelter near the border with Egypt, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 20 April 2024. EPA/HAITHAM IMAD
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Biden Names New Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues

Internally displaced Palestinians, who fled their homes due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, take shelter near the border with Egypt, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 20 April 2024. EPA/HAITHAM IMAD
Internally displaced Palestinians, who fled their homes due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, take shelter near the border with Egypt, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 20 April 2024. EPA/HAITHAM IMAD

US President Joe Biden on Thursday appointed Lise Grande as the new special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, the State Department said in a statement.

Grande, who replaces David Satterfield, is currently head of the independent US Institute of Peace.

She previously worked for the United Nations for more than 25 years, a career that included running aid operations in Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan.

The United Nations has long complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza in the six months since Israel began an aerial and ground offensive against the Gaza Strip's Hamas.

Israel's military campaign has reduced much of the territory of 2.3 million people to a wasteland with an unfolding humanitarian disaster since October, when Hamas ignited war by storming into southern Israel.

Satterfield said on Tuesday that Israel has taken significant steps in recent weeks on allowing aid into Gaza, but considerable work remained to be done as the risk of famine in the enclave is very high.

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Arab World

Syrian Government, Kurdish Officials Discuss Merging Their Armed Forces

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
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Syrian Government, Kurdish Officials Discuss Merging Their Armed Forces

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)

Government officials met Wednesday in the northeastern province of Hasakeh with the commander of the main Kurdish-led group in the country, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is backed by the US.

The new Syrian government wants to bring Syria’s breakaway Kurdish militias back under government control, but the details of their recent breakthrough agreement are still being worked out and negotiators will have overcome a decade of civil war.

Wednesday’s meeting comes a week after Syria’s interim government signed a deal with the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s northeast, including a ceasefire and the merging of the SDF into the Syrian army.

The deal should be implemented by the end of the year. It would bring northeast Syria’s borders and lucrative oil fields under the central government’s control.