Washington DC, US
Reuters
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday told a senior Israeli official that the steps Israel has taken to better the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza must lead to actual improvement on the ground, the State Department said on Tuesday.
Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote to their Israeli counterparts on 13th October with a checklist of specific steps to address the worsening situation in the Palestinian enclave amid a renewed Israeli offensive.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gestures as he walks with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, Israel, on 1st May, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/File photo
Washington gave Israel 30 days to comply and said results on the ground would determine whether or not enough had been done. Washington has not yet said whether it deems Israel to have complied.
In a meeting on Monday, Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer updated Blinken on the policy decisions the Israeli government has taken to address the requirements, along with operational changes by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“The Secretary emphasized the importance of ensuring those changes lead to an actual improvement in the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, including through the delivery of additional assistance to civilians throughout Gaza,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israel’s humanitarian efforts over the past six months, “highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches.”
International aid groups said on Tuesday that Israel had not only failed to meet US demands but even taken steps that “dramatically worsened” the situation on the ground.
“Israel not only failed to meet the US criteria that would indicate support to the humanitarian response, but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in Northern Gaza,” a group of eight aid groups including Oxfam, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council said in 19-page report.
For more than a month, Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into north Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and creating fresh waves of displacement in an operation they say is designed to prevent Hamas fighters regrouping there.
On Friday, global food security experts released a rare warning of imminent famine in parts of northern Gaza unless immediate steps were taken to ease the situation.
Louise Wateridge, Senior Emergency Officer for UNRWA in Gaza, told a Geneva press briefing that aid trucks into the Strip had fallen in October and that no food was allowed to enter northern Gaza for an entire month.
“The people here need everything. They need more. It’s not enough,” she said.
Asked what she expected Washington to do about the deadline, she said: “Anything that happens now is already too late. Thousands and thousands of people have been killed senselessly. They have been killed because there is lack of aid, because the bombs have continued and because we have not been able to even reach them under the rubble.”
– Additional reporting by KANISHKA SINGH, ISMAIL SHAKIL and ARI RABINOVITCH in Jerusalem
