US says it won’t withhold weapons to Israel, as deadline to address aid crisis passes
Lacking leverage after election, Biden aides say Israel took sufficient steps to comply with US law, even if Jerusalem didn’t meet all the demands it was given 30 days to act on
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it would not withhold weapon shipments to Israel, as a 30-day deadline for Jerusalem to significantly alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza expired.
US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel acknowledged during a press briefing that Israel implemented some — but not all — of the steps demanded by the US in an October 13 letter giving Jerusalem a month to act or risk being deemed out of compliance with US law, which bars offensive weapons from being transferred to countries that block aid from reaching civilians.
Nonetheless, Patel stated that the US has not, at this time, “made an assessment that there that the Israelis are in violation of US law.”
The determination came less than a week after Donald Trump won the presidential election, significantly slashing the Biden administration’s leverage over Israel, given that the president-elect would surely reverse any decision to withhold weapon shipments to Israel upon returning to office in just over two months.
Patel pointed to steps taken by Israel over the past 30 days, including reopening the Erez Crossing into northern Gaza; opening the Kissufim Crossing into central Gaza; waiving certain customs requirements for aid organizations; opening new aid delivery routes within Gaza; resuming aid delivery to northern Gaza after a near-month-long siege; expanding the the coastal Muwasi humanitarian zone inland; and instituting periodic humanitarian pauses.
“The ultimate hope is that through these steps, some conditions have been created in which we can see things like additional aid, additional food trucks, additional measures being taken that ultimately will be beneficial to the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Patel said.
The State Department spokesperson stressed the US will continue monitoring Israel’s compliance with American law and will act accordingly if it deems that Jerusalem has failed to do so.
Patel was hammered repeatedly by reporters questioning how the Biden administration could determine that Israel has not violated US law if it was not meeting the standards set out in the letter.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in the October 13 letter that the US wanted to see 350 aid trucks enter Gaza every day. October ended seeing fewer trucks enter Gaza than any other month this year, with an Israeli military body putting the daily average at 57. Patel revealed that from November 1 to November 9, just 404 trucks crossed into Gaza.
“What matters most is not just a specific action or a specific item, but the totality of progress,” Patel claimed, while saying the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “dire.”
The State Department spokesperson added that had it not been for US intervention, the handful of steps Israel did take over the past month would not have happened. Moreover, he noted that the US remains the world’s largest provider of aid to the Palestinians.
Earlier Tuesday, aid groups issued a report requested by the Biden administration, which determined that Israel had failed to meet the vast majority of the requirements laid out by Blinken and Austin in their letter.
The report listed 19 measures of compliance with the US demands. It said that Israel had failed to comply with 15 and only partially complied with four.
The report was co-signed by Anera, Care, MedGlobal, Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International and Save the Children.
In the October 13 letter, the US gave Israel 30 days to, among other things, allow a minimum of 350 truckloads of goods into Gaza each day; open a fifth crossing; allow people in coastal tent camps to move inland before the winter; and ensure access for aid groups to northern Gaza. It also called on Israel to halt legislation that would hinder operations of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, which has come under fire after several of its employees were found to have participated in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught that sparked the ongoing war.
Aid levels remain far below the US benchmarks. Access to northern Gaza remains restricted, and Israel passed the legislation against UNRWA into law.
Israel launched a major offensive last month in the north, where it said Hamas had regrouped. The operation has displaced tens of thousands and killed hundreds, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose unverified figures don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Through October and the first days of November, Israel allowed no food to enter several towns in north Gaza, where despite evacuation orders tens of thousands of civilians have stayed.
Last week, Israel allowed 11 trucks to go to Beit Hanoun, one of the north’s hardest-hit towns. But the World Food Organization said troops at a checkpoint forced its trucks to unload their cargo before reaching shelters in the town.
On Tuesday, COGAT — the military agency in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza — announced it allowed a new delivery of food and water to Beit Hanoun the day before. The WFP said that while it tried to dispatch 14 trucks, only three made it to the town “due to delays in receiving authorization for movement and crowds along the route.” When it tried to deliver the rest on Tuesday, Israel denied it permission, it said.
Aid into all of Gaza plummeted in October, when just 34,000 tons of food entered, only a third of the previous month, according to Israeli data.
UN agencies say even less actually gets through because of Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and lawlessness that makes it difficult to collect and distribute aid on the Gaza side.
COGAT said 900 truckloads of aid are sitting uncollected on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.
“Before the organizations give out grades, they should focus on distributing the aid that awaits them,” COGAT said in response to the aid groups’ report.
Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said the military was not coordinating movements for aid trucks to reach the stacked-up cargos. “If we are not provided a safe passage to go and collect it … it will not reach the people who need it,” she said.
COGAT blamed the drop in October on closures of the crossings for the Jewish high holidays and memorials marking the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 onslaught. An Israeli official also pointed to theft by Hamas and organized crime families in Gaza.
The United States has rushed billions of dollars in military aid to Israel during the war while pressing it to allow more aid into Gaza.
“There must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council on Tuesday.
She also said “thanks to intervention by the United States, Israel has taken some important steps” toward addressing “the undisputed humanitarian crisis” in the Strip.
“Still, Israel must ensure its actions are fully implemented — and its improvements sustained over time.”
Agencies contributed to this report.
