US sidesteps its own deadline for Israel to improve Gaza aid

The Biden administration sidestepped its own 30-day deadline for Israel to provide significantly more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip or face a weapons cutoff, saying progress has been made despite aid groups warning of a looming famine.

Israel has done enough to assuage U.S. concerns but needs to do more, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said in a briefing Tuesday in Washington.

“We, at this time, have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law,” Patel told reporters. “If we don’t see steps being taken, we of course will appropriately enforce U.S. law.”

The decision follows a warning from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a joint letter dated Oct. 13 to their Israeli counterparts of the “increasingly dire” situation in Gaza and giving Israel 30 days to improve the situation. The letter became public although it was intended to set down a private marker.

The October letter emphasized that a U.S. law requires countries receiving American weapons to “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede” humanitarian assistance provided or supported by the U.S.

However, aid groups disputed the U.S. findings of improved aid.

“The military offensive is cutting off people’s access to the essentials for their survival, including water,” Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, said of northern Gaza, where the Israeli military has stepped up operations in recent weeks. “The situation is rapidly deteriorating.”

As winter approaches, the lack of food and other vital supplies entering Gaza means the situation could soon turn into a famine in the north, she said.

On Tuesday, eight groups including Oxfam and Save the Children said Israel has failed to address the specific criteria laid out in the letter and that Israel’s actions actually have “dramatically worsened” the situation inside Gaza.

“Israel has failed to comply with its ally’s demands – at enormous human cost for Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” the groups said. “The facts are clear: The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now at its worst point since the war began in October, 2023.”

On Friday, a United Nations-affiliated famine review committee issued an alert warning of the “imminent and substantial likelihood of famine” due to “the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.” It warned that action within days is required and that access to food is at critical levels and “rapidly deteriorating.”

In their letter, Blinken and Austin called for Israel to allow a minimum of 350 trucks of aid into Gaza daily, enhance security for aid sites and the movement of humanitarian workers and end the isolation of northern Gaza, among other actions.

The Israelis have taken steps including reopening a crossing into Gaza, waiving certain onerous customs requirements for aid shipments and starting new delivery routes within Gaza, Patel said on Tuesday, adding that the Israeli government needed to do more.

Only 404 trucks entered Gaza between Nov. 1 and Nov. 9, Patel added. That’s far fewer than the 350 per day called for in the U.S. letter.

The Israeli government’s own data show the number of aid trucks entering Gaza may actually have decreased in the days since the letter. The average number of recorded deliveries between October 13 and November 10 decreased by 15% compared with the same period before the letter was sent.

“I would not view it as giving them a pass,” Patel said, when asked repeatedly how the U.S. had determined the situation was improving. Under questioning, he said “I don’t want us to go down a rabbit hole of specific truck numbers.”

Israel’s stance

Israel welcomed the State Department’s determination, and pushed back against the warnings of widespread hunger. The country’s envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told reporters Israel was trying to increase aid into Gaza even while pursuing Hamas militants, who govern the strip and sparked the war with their Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.

“We work very hard in order to assist the humanitarian needs in Gaza, and it’s challenging,” Danon told reporters on Tuesday. “Because on the other side, you have Hamas. So even if we allow trucks” to “cross the checkpoints, Hamas will hijack the trucks.”

Hamas is an Iran-backed organization considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and many other countries.

More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its offensive in October last year, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage with its attack on Israel.

Blinken and other U.S. officials have repeatedly pressed Israel over disruptions to the supply of food, water and other goods to Gaza, but any improvements to the volume of aid are often short-lived.

The 30-day deadline given to Israel was to have “some type of mark on the wall to work toward,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told reporters in a separate briefing on Tuesday.

“The U.S. government believes that had this letter not been sent, had these conversations not been had, we wouldn’t have seen the kinds of increases that we’ve seen now,” Ryder said, adding “we’re not going to take our foot off the gas.”

But President-elect Donald Trump has indicated he’s not as inclined to pressure Israel. On Tuesday he announced he will nominate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who has taken an expansive view of Israel’s rights, to be ambassador to Israel.

“He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” Trump said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that “Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

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With assistance from Jason Kao, Rachel Lavin and Natalia Drozdiak.