Washington: 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 only that some progress has been made.
Israel has done enough to assuage US 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 US law,” Patel told reporters. “If we don’t see steps being taken, we of course will appropriately enforce US law.”
The decision follows a warning from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in a joint letter dated October 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 emphasised that a US law requires countries receiving American weapons to “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede” humanitarian assistance provided or supported by the US.
However, aid groups disputed the US findings of improved aid. 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 humanitarian situation.
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 north 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 November 1 and November 9, he added — far fewer than the 350 per day called for in the US letter.
No ‘pass’
“I would not view it as giving them a pass,” Patel said, when asked repeatedly how the US had determined the situation was improving when aid groups said it was getting worse. Under questioning, he said “I don’t want us to go down a rabbit hole of specific truck numbers.”
Blinken reviewed steps Israel has taken with the country’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Monday, but stressed “the importance of ensuring those changes lead to an actual improvement in the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza,” the State Department said in a statement.
Aid groups have accused the Israeli military of conducting an effective siege of northern Gaza in pursuit of Iran-backed militants, disrupting the distribution of food and medical supplies.
Blinken and other US officials have repeatedly pressed Israel over disruptions to the supply of food, water and other supplies to Gaza since Hamas militants “- who govern the strip “- launched their attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war that’s now in its second year.
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