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A day after the United States said it had told Israel that a failure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza could prompt a cutoff of military supplies, one of the starkest U.S. warnings since the war began, there was no official response from the Israeli government.
COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the West Bank, insists that it is not limiting aid to Gaza and has blamed humanitarian agencies for failing to distribute the supplies it admits into the enclave after screening. On Wednesday, it announced that it had inspected and permitted 50 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza from Jordan — carrying food, water, medical and other supplies — “in accordance with international law.”
That is a fraction of what aid agencies say is needed to offset a severe hunger crisis in Gaza, especially in the north, where the United Nations has said that Israel “has tightened a siege” this month as it steps up military operations against Hamas.
“People have run out of ways to cope, food systems have collapsed and the risk of famine is real,” the U.N. World Food Program said this week of northern Gaza.
On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sent a letter addressed to Israel’s minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, and its minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, saying that Israel had 30 days to allow more aid into Gaza or the United States, Israel’s main military supplier, would consider cutting off military aid.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, describes the humanitarian situation as “increasingly dire” and criticizes Israel’s government for halting commercial imports, preventing aid workers from moving from south to north Gaza, confining the population into a narrow coastal strip and for a burdensome process of vetting what aid can enter the enclave.
Israel should enable a minimum of 350 aid trucks per day to enter, to allow people confined into a so-called humanitarian zone on the coast to move inland before winter and also take other measures, the letter said.
The letter appeared to depart from the U.S. approach of “hectoring” Israel’s government to allow more aid, according to Michael Hanna, U.S. program director for the International Crisis Group think tank.
As a result, it gives the administration “the possibility of having a really serious conversation” with Israel about aid, but some policymakers in Israel would likely view its eventual outcome as an affirmation of the status quo, Mr. Hanna said.
Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, said that one striking element of the letter was its warning that the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act bars military support from going to any nation that restricts the delivery of humanitarian aid. He said that this reference to U.S. legal obligations would increase its “political impact” in Israel.
The British government added to the pressure, urging Israel to ensure civilians are protected and aid routes remain open. It called an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to discuss the issue.
At the meeting, the U.N.’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, told the Security Council that it needed to act to address the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The level of suffering in Gaza defies our ability to capture it in words, or even to comprehend its scale,” she said. “Reality is brutal in Gaza, and it gets worse every day, as the bombs continue to fall, as fierce fighting continues unabated and as supplies essential for people’s survival and humanitarian assistance are blocked at every turn.”
Aid workers say that extreme hunger in Gaza has been growing for months. The 30-day deadline falls after the U.S. presidential election, potentially making it politically easier for President Biden to take tougher action against Israel than he has so far been willing to.
Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday that aid into Gaza “has fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak” during the war. According to COGAT figures, at least 465 relief trucks entered Gaza over the first half of October, compared to roughly 2,500 over a similar period last month.
On Tuesday, a total of 145 aid trucks entered Gaza through border crossings in the north and south, COGAT said. It added that 610 trucks of aid permitted into Gaza “are waiting for collection” inside the enclave.
Aid groups, for their part, argue that the Israeli military has made it difficult to distribute what little aid is getting into Gaza, often refusing permission for convoys to pass Israeli checkpoints and sometimes firing on them. In addition, Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza in May led to the closure of the border crossing there, one of the main conduits for aid.
“The last couple of months, they have not been good at all,” Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, said in an interview on Tuesday.
The U.S. letter also provided a significant show of diplomatic backing for UNRWA at a time when Israel’s Knesset is considering bills that would declare it a terrorist organization. The United States is deeply concerned about the bill and restrictions on UNRWA that would devastate the humanitarian response at a critical moment, the letter said.
A panel of global experts said in June that almost half a million Gazans faced starvation because of a catastrophic lack of food. This has also made it harder for people to recover from illnesses and war-related injuries amid a health care system that has been devastated by the conflict.
“Medical needs are overwhelming,” the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Tuesday.
Aaron Boxerman and Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
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