US notes initial steps taken by Israel to boost humanitarian aid into Strip, hours after confirming it sent letter warning of consequences if situation doesn’t improve in 30 days
Israel allowed 50 trucks of humanitarian aid into the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, hours after the US confirmed sending a letter warning that Washington’s continued supply of weapons was at risk if Jerusalem didn’t take significant steps to address the growing humanitarian crisis in the enclave within 30 days.
Fifty trucks carrying food, water, medical supplies and shelter equipment from Jordan were transferred from the Allenby Crossing into the West Bank into northern Gaza through the Erez West Crossing, said a statement from COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in the coastal enclave.
COGAT said Israel “will continue to facilitate and ease the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Israel allowed 30 trucks of aid to reach northern Gaza on Monday after nearly two weeks during which humanitarian groups said that all assistance had been blocked. This period coincided with the IDF’s launch of an operation aimed at thwarting Hamas’s revival in northern Gaza.
The military issued broad evacuation orders to tens of thousands of civilians before launching the operation, but many have refused to comply. Some have said they are unable, others cite claims Israeli troops have targeted those fleeing the area and others highlight the squalid conditions in the southern Gaza humanitarian zone where millions have been pushed after repeated evacuations throughout the past year of war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught.
The dire conditions in northern Gaza appeared to have been one of the triggers leading US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to send a letter to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday, warning that Israel would be in violation of an executive order signed by President Joe Biden if significant measures weren’t taken to alleviate the humanitarian situation in Gaza within a month.
The February executive order requires the administration to receive written assurances from recipients of security assistance that they won’t arbitrarily restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.
In their letter, Blinken and Austin pointed to the fact that September saw the lowest amount of aid entering Gaza since the start of the war; the apparent Israeli “isolation” of northern Gaza and the nearly complete halt to aid deliveries from Jordan. They suggested that Israel was not adhering to a written assurance it provided in March and presented a list demanding over a dozen steps be taken in the next 30 days to address the humanitarian crisis.
Failure to do so would put the continued US supply of offensive weapons to Israel in jeopardy.
Asked by reporters what legal action should be taken against Israel if the warnings in the letter are ignored, US Vice President Kamala Harris responded, “We’ll take it one step at a time, if necessary.”
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller noted during a Wednesday briefing that the administration is still obligated under US law to ensure that Israel maintains a Qualitative Military Edge over its regional adversaries, in addition to abiding by the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding to deliver $3.8 billion in security assistance to Israel through 2028.
The February executive order requires the administration to receive written assurances from recipients of security assistance that they won’t arbitrarily restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.
In their letter, Blinken and Austin pointed to the fact that September saw the lowest amount of aid entering Gaza since the start of the war; the apparent Israeli “isolation” of northern Gaza and the nearly complete halt to aid deliveries from Jordan. They suggested that Israel was not adhering to a written assurance it provided in March and presented a list demanding over a dozen steps be taken in the next 30 days to address the humanitarian crisis.
Failure to do so would put the continued US supply of offensive weapons to Israel in jeopardy.
Asked by reporters what legal action should be taken against Israel if the warnings in the letter are ignored, US Vice President Kamala Harris responded, “We’ll take it one step at a time, if necessary.”
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller noted during a Wednesday briefing that the administration is still obligated under US law to ensure that Israel maintains a Qualitative Military Edge over its regional adversaries, in addition to abiding by the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding to deliver $3.8 billion in security assistance to Israel through 2028.
However, he noted that the administration is no less bound by the February executive order, indicating that the US could still restrict the delivery of some — but not all— weapons to Israel.
Alarmed by the US warning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting Friday to discuss expanding humanitarian aid to Gaza, three Israeli officials who attended the discussion said, adding that assistance would likely to increase soon.
A fourth Israeli official said the security cabinet was expected to further discuss the matter on Sunday.
Miller noted Wednesday that Israel has already taken several steps to address the crisis since the letter was sent.
He pointed to the 50 aid trucks Israel allowed into northern Gaza earlier in the day.
Over the past several days, Israel also reopened the Erez Crossing into northern Gaza in addition to opening a new access route from the south to the north of the Strip, Miller said, adding that another route was opened for delivering aid in southern Gaza.
Israel also reopened an aid route to allow the resumption of aid deliveries from Jordan, he added.
Israel has taken steps to approve new warehouses and other staging facilities for the UN and other humanitarian organizations aimed at easing some of the logistical burdens they have faced in storing and delivering aid inside Gaza, Miller continued.
Israel has also informed the UN and other humanitarian organizations in the past day that it would waive for 12 months the customs declarations that it has been requiring individuals to sign to bring goods in, Miller said. This follows a request from aid organizations and was one of the demands made by the Biden administration in its letter to Israel earlier this week.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council during a Wednesday session on the Gaza war that Washington is watching to ensure that Israel’s actions on the ground show that it does not have a “policy of starvation” in the northern Gaza Strip.
She told the 15-member council that such a policy would be “horrific and unacceptable and would have implications under international law and US law.”
“The Government of Israel has said that this is not their policy, that food and other essential supplies will not be cut off, and we will be watching to see that Israel’s actions on the ground match this statement,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters ahead of the Security Council meeting that Jerusalem “remains committed to working with our international partners to ensure aid reaches those who need it” in the Gaza Strip.
“The problem in Gaza is not a lack of aid. The problem is Hamas, which hijacks the aid — stealing, storing, and selling it to feed their terror machine, while civilians suffer,” he said.
This dynamic is what has led several former IDF generals to advocate for laying siege to northern Gaza until Hamas fighters aiming to re-establish control over the area surrender. The IDF has insisted that this is not its policy.
Moreover, US officials have warned that Hamas fighters will likely continue popping up throughout Gaza, so long as Israel doesn’t allow for a viable alternative to fill the temporary power vacuum it is creating through its military victories. The US argues that the Palestinian Authority should be tasked with filling that vacuum, but that idea has been blocked by Netanyahu, who likens the PA to Hamas and rejects the two-state framework that the PA aims to advance through its return to Gaza.
Netanyahu’s refusal to plan for the post-war management of Gaza has been a major source of tension with the US, with Biden and his aides convinced that the premier is unwilling to take steps necessary for winding down the war due to fears that he’ll alienate his far-right coalition partners who he needs to remain in power.
Asked about Blinken and Austin’s letter during a press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed that the message was similar to one that Washington sent in April after Gaza aid had plummeted and the IDF had just killed several aid workers in an airstrike.
Israel responded to that warning constructively, taking a range of steps to boost aid, and the administration hopes it will do so again this time, Jean-Pierre added.
As reported by The Times of Israel