US envoy says increased aid flow to Gaza ‘doesn’t make up for’ past 5 months

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

File: David Satterfield at Rice University in Houston, Texas, October 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)
File: David Satterfield at Rice University in Houston, Texas, October 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

The Biden administration’s Gaza humanitarian envoy David Satterfield clarifies that the aid increase over the past several days “doesn’t make up for five months of something very, very different.”

“The five months that preceded did not show an adequate ability by Israel to facilitate and implement the operational steps necessary to get aid in,” Satterfield contends.

The number of trucks entering each day barely crossed 100 through January, after which shipments effectively stopped completely due to protests by far-right activists at Israeli inspection points near the Gaza border, the US envoy said. In February, the IDF began conducting airstrikes against the Hamas-linked police, leading the force to stop protecting aid convoys, which Satterfield says “shut down assistance moves and spurred intensely violent criminal behavior.”

“We’ve come back from that, but… it’s got to continue,” Satterfield says.

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