Blinken speaks with Gallant as US says Israel failing to boost Gaza aid deliveries
State Department says Israel ‘failed’ to sufficiently improve humanitarian conditions as deadline to meet requirements or risk restrictions on military assistance draws near
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone Monday with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to review the steps Israel has taken to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the US State Department said, as the deadline draws near for Israel to meet certain requirements set by the US, or risk potential restrictions on offensive military assistance.
The call came three days after Blinken held a similar conversation with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, and as the US stepped up its criticism over what it said was an insufficient attempt to rectify the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.
Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Gallant and Dermer on October 13, warning that failure to address the humanitarian crisis within 30 days could have legal implications for continued US offensive weapons shipments to Israel because recipients of such aid are legally barred from blocking humanitarian assistance.
Among other conditions, Austin and Blinken’s letter from mid-October said that Israel must allow in a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. However, the Associated Press reported last Friday that a review of UN and Israeli data found the average number of trucks entering Gaza daily remained well below that number.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday gave Israel a “fail” grade in terms of meeting the conditions for an improvement in aid deliveries and said that while there are still roughly nine days until the deadline expires, the limited progress so far has been insufficient.
“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around,” Miller told reporters. “We have seen an increase in some measurements. But if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter — those have not been met.”
Before Gaza-ruling Hamas started the war with its terror onslaught on southern Israel in October 2023, an average of 500 trucks daily brought aid into the Strip. Relief groups have said that’s the minimum needed for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, most of whom have since been uprooted from their homes, often multiple times.
There has never been a month where Israel came close to meeting that figure since fighting began, and it peaked in April at 225 trucks a day, according to Israeli government figures.
By the time Blinken and Austin sent their letter, concerns were rising that aid restrictions were starving civilians. The number of aid trucks that Israel has allowed into Gaza has plunged since last spring and summer, falling to a daily average of just 13 a day by the beginning of October, according to UN figures.
By the end of the month, it rose to an average of 71 trucks a day, the UN figures show.
Once supplies get to Gaza, groups still face obstacles in distributing the aid to warehouses and then to people in need, organizations and the State Department said last week. That includes slow Israeli processing, Israeli restrictions on shipments, lawlessness and other obstacles, aid groups said.
The reduction in aid deliveries to Gaza has been felt most heavily in the north of the enclave, where Israel launched a new operation last month aimed at thwarting Hamas’s revival.
Throughout the first two weeks of the offensive, no aid entered northern Gaza, prompting outrage from aid groups and Israel’s allies, including the US.
The two-week halt on aid into northern Gaza led to reports that Israel was implementing the so-called “General’s Plan” to seal off humanitarian aid to the north in an attempt to starve out Hamas terrorists.
If implemented, the highly controversial plan could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes after being ordered to flee by the IDF.
The IDF denied carrying out such a plan, although government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have yet to do the same on record.
Data from COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, shows that aid has fallen to under a third of its levels in September and August. In September, 87,446 tons of aid entered the Gaza Strip. In October, 26,399 tons got in.
“The results are not good enough today,” Miller said. “They certainly do not have a pass. … They have failed to implement all the things that we recommended. Now, that said, we are not at the end of the 30-day period.”
He would not say when asked what the US would do when the deadline comes up next week, just that “we will follow the law.”
Austin too has been reinforcing “how important it is to ensure that humanitarian assistance can flow and flow faster into Gaza” in calls with Gallant, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
COGAT said on Monday that it had evacuated 72 patients from hospitals in northern Gaza to other medical facilities Monday and had brought medical supplies as well as fuel, food, water and units of blood.
Miller also said the US is looking into a decision by the Israeli government to withdraw from the 1967 agreement recognizing the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA after the Knesset passed legislation to severely limit the operations of the agency in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The decision to sever ties with UNRWA was opposed by Blinken and Austin in their letter.
While Israel has long had a combative relationship with UNRWA, anger peaked following Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught, in which a number of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated, including by kidnapping and killing Israelis.
Israel has alleged that 10 percent of the UN agency’s staff have ties to Hamas — a charge the agency has denied.
Ahead of the passage of the legislation, UNRWA confirmed that a Hamas Nukbha commander killed in an Israeli strike, who led the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7 last year, had been employed by the agency since July 2022.
Against this backdrop, the two bills swiftly made their way through the Knesset, with sponsorship from both coalition and opposition lawmakers.
War in Gaza erupted when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through communities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 251 hostages, of whom 97 are believed to still be held in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 44,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
