Israel is far from meeting the United States’ ultimatum to increase aid to Gaza

WASHINGTON – Halfway to the Biden administration’s 30-day ultimatum for Israel to increase the level of humanitarian aid allowed to Gaza under threat of possible cuts to U.S. military funding, Israel falls significantly short, an Associated Press review of U.N. and Israel data shows.

Israel also failed to meet other deadlines and demands outlined in an October 13 letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The mid-November deadline – after the US elections – could serve as a final test of President Joe Biden’s willingness to check a close ally that has ignored repeated US appeals to protect Palestinian civilians during the war against Hamas.

In their letter, Blinken and Austin demanded improvements to the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza, saying Israel must admit at least 350 trucks a day carrying desperately needed food and other supplies. According to the latest UN data, an average of just 71 trucks entered Gaza a day by the end of October.

Blinken said the State Department and Pentagon are closely monitoring Israel’s response to the letter.

“There has been progress, but not enough, and we are working every day to make sure that Israel does what it must to ensure that aid reaches the people who need it in the Gaza Strip,” Blinken told reporters.

“It is not enough to bring a truck to Gaza. It is important that what they bring with them can be distributed effectively in Gaza,” he added.

Blinken and Austin’s letter was one of the toughest stands the Biden administration has taken in a year of calls and warnings for Israel to reduce harm to Palestinian civilians.

Support for Israel is a core issue for many Republican and some Democratic voters. That makes any decision by the Biden administration to cut military funding for the U.S. ally fraught amid a tight presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Aid groups say that, especially in the hardest-hit northern part of the Gaza Strip, the escalating Israeli military campaign and aid restrictions have prevented food and other aid from reaching populated areas since mid-October. International observers say this could set the stage for famine in the coming weeks or months.

And despite U.S. opposition, Israeli lawmakers voted this week to effectively ban the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. Governments around the world, the United Nations and aid groups say cutting off UNRWA would dismantle aid networks struggling to supply people in Gaza with food and other supplies.

“Disastrous,” Amber Alayyan, medical program manager for Gaza at Doctors Without Borders, said of the move.

Aid officials are deeply skeptical that Israel will significantly improve aid to civilians in Gaza even after the U.S. warning, or that the Biden administration will do anything if it doesn’t.

At this stage of the war, “none of these things have happened,” said Scott Paul, deputy director of the humanitarian organization Oxfam.

“Biden administration officials have repeatedly told us that there are processes in place to assess the situation on the ground” in Gaza “and some actions have been taken to implement U.S. law, but time and time again this has not been successful,” Paul said.

Before the war, aid was brought to these areas on average 500 trucks a day. Aid groups said it was the minimum needed for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, most of whom have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.

According to Israeli government data, there has never been a month in which Israel came close to reaching that number, peaking in April at 225 trucks per day.

Before Blinken and Austin sent their letter this month, there were growing concerns that aid cuts were causing civilian hunger. The number of aid trucks that Israel has allowed into Gaza has dropped since last spring and summer, reaching a daily average of just 13 a day in early October, according to UN data.

By the end of the month, that number had increased to an average of 71 trucks a day, according to UN data.

Once supplies arrive in Gaza, groups still face obstacles in distributing aid to warehouses and then to people in need, the organizations and the State Department said this week. This includes slow processing by Israel, Israeli supply restrictions, lawlessness and other obstacles, aid groups said.

Data from COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian aid in Gaza, show aid has fallen to less than a third of the level in September and August. In September, 87,446 tons of aid arrived in the Gaza Strip. In October, 26,399 tons arrived.

Elad Goren, a senior COGAT official, said last week that aid delivery and distribution in the north was mainly limited to Gaza City.

Asked why aid had not been delivered to other parts of the north – like Jabaliya, the crowded urban refugee camp where Israel is mounting an offensive – he replied that the population was being evacuated and those who remained had received “sufficient aid” from the previous months.

In other areas, such as Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, Goren falsely claimed that there was “no population left there.”

COGAT declined to comment on the standard contained in the US letter. He stated that he complied with government directives regarding aid to Gaza. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, accused Hamas of looting aid.

Oxfam’s Paul said no aid had reached populated areas of northern Gaza and only small amounts were reaching Gaza City.

“In no way” has Israel made progress in providing humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of people in the northern Gaza Strip, especially since the United States’ ultimatum, said Alayyan of Doctors Without Borders.

The Israeli government appeared to have missed another deadline set in Austin and Blinken’s letter. He called on Israel to establish a senior channel for U.S. officials to express concerns about reported damage to Palestinian civilians, and to hold a first meeting by the end of October.

As of the last day of the month, no such canal – which the United States had requested repeatedly during the war – had been established.

The United States is by far the largest supplier of weapons and other military aid to Israel, including nearly $18 billion during the Gaza war, according to a study by Brown University’s Costs of War project.

Last spring, the Biden administration halted a planned shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, citing concerns about civilians involved in the Israeli offensive.

During a formal review in May, the administration concluded that Israel’s use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law, but said war conditions prevented officials from making that determination for specific attacks.