US finds that Israel is not impeding assistance to Gaza; aid groups disagree
2024.11.12 16:06
By Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden’s administration has concluded that Israel is not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore is not violating U.S. law, the State Department said on Tuesday, even as Washington acknowledged the humanitarian situation remained dire in the Palestinian enclave.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in an Oct. 13 letter gave their Israeli counterparts a list of specific steps that Israel needs to do to within the next 30 days to address the worsening situation in Gaza. Failure to do so may have possible consequences on U.S. military aid to Israel, they said in the letter.
But on Tuesday, as the deadline mentioned in the letter expires, State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel repeatedly declined to say if the specific criteria were fulfilled. Instead, he told reporters that Israel has taken steps to address the demands and that Washington would continue to assess the situation.
“We’ve seen some progress being made. We would like to see some more changes happen. We believe that had it not been for U.S. intervention, these changes may not have ever taken place,” Patel said, adding that Washington will continue to assess Israel’s compliance with U.S. law.
International aid groups said Israel had failed to meet the series of U.S. demands intended to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by the Tuesday deadline.
Patel declined to explain why Washington chose to make the assessment based on Israel’s measures to address the problems instead of actual results on the ground, which U.S. officials have repeatedly said would be their measuring stick.
The Department’s spokesperson, Matthew Miller, in a Nov. 4 briefing said the results on the ground as of then were not good enough.
Blinken in his meeting with Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer also emphasized the need for Israel’s steps to lead to actual improvements on the ground.
ISRAEL’S STEPS
On Tuesday, Patel said Israel had taken some steps, including reopening the Erez crossing, waiving certain customs requirements and opening additional delivery routes within Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israeli humanitarian efforts over the past six months, “highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches.”
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon welcomed the statement from the State Department. “We work very closely with our allies in Washington,” he told reporters. “We did a lot. We worked very hard in order to assist the humanitarian needs in Gaza.”
“It’s challenging … because on the other side, you have Hamas. So even if we allow trucks to cross the checkpoints, Hamas will hijack the trucks, and sometimes even when we do 100% we cannot guarantee the results,” he added.
The U.S. deadline expired just days after global food security experts said there is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of northern Gaza, as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas Palestinian militants there.
For more than a month, Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into north Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and displacing new waves of people in an operation they say is designed to prevent Hamas fighters regrouping.
Biden, whose term ends soon, has offered strong backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble where more than 2 million Gazans seek shelter as best they can.
