The United States said Tuesday that Israel has made limited progress on increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip as Washington requested, so the Biden administration will not limit arms transfers to Israel.
State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters that "we at this time have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law."
The administration told its ally on October 13 that it had one month to increase aid to Gaza, where the situation after 13 months of war between Israel and Hamas militants has unleashed a catastrophic humanitarian situation, or face a reduction in military aid. The deadline was Tuesday.
“We are not giving Israel a pass," Patel said, adding that "we want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve, and we think some of these steps will allow the conditions for that to continue to progress."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israel’s top national security adviser, Ron Dermer, in Washington on Monday to go over the steps that Israel has taken.
At the United Nations, U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that Israel has taken some important steps, including restoring aid deliveries to the north, but that it must ensure its actions are “fully implemented and its improvements sustained over time.”
“And we continue to reiterate, there must be no forcible displacement nor policy of starvation in Gaza, which would have grave implications under U.S. and international law,” she said.
A senior U.N. human rights official said at the same meeting that the entry and distribution of aid into Gaza has fallen to “some of the lowest levels in a year” and criticized Israel’s conduct of military operations in the north.
“All states, consistent with their obligations under international law, must therefore assess arms sales or transfers and provision of military, logistical or financial support to a party to the conflict, with a view to ending such support if this risks serious violations of international law,” Ilze Brands Kehris, U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, said.
Israel denies it is limiting aid to Gaza, blaming the U.N. and aid agencies for slow distribution and Hamas for stealing it.
Earlier Tuesday, eight international aid organizations said that of 19 measures of compliance with the U.S. demands, Israel failed to comply with 15 and only partially complied with four.
"Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. 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," the report said. “That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago.”
Asked what grade the United Nations would give Israel, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric would not offer one, but said, “I think from what we've been telling you over the last few days and frankly much longer, it's pretty clear that we're nowhere near what we need.”
While aid entering Gaza is insufficient overall, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says it is especially bad in northern Gaza, where 85% of its attempts to coordinate aid convoys and humanitarian visits in October were denied or impeded.
“As I brief you, Israeli authorities are blocking humanitarian assistance from entering North Gaza, where fighting continues, and around 75,000 people remain with dwindling water and food supplies,” acting humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya told the Security Council meeting.
“Conditions of life across Gaza are unfit for human survival,” she said.
Famine alert
On Friday, U.N.-backed food security experts issued an urgent warning, saying there is a strong likelihood that famine is occurring or imminent in parts of northern Gaza and that immediate action is needed to avert a catastrophe.
“By the time famine has been declared, people are already dying of hunger, with irreversible consequences that can last generations,” Rein Paulsen told the Security Council meeting. Paulsen is the director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience at the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
“The window of opportunity to deliver this assistance is now, today, not tomorrow,” he said.
Israel’s U.N. ambassador told reporters ahead of the council meeting that the report by the famine committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC as the experts are known, is “harmful propaganda” and “filled with baseless and slanderous claims” against Israel.
“As I have said here in the past, there are agencies dedicated to real humanitarian work, and then there are those like the IPC, which prioritize smearing Israel over actually helping those in need,” Danny Danon said.
Inside the council, he said IPC claims of imminent famine in northern Gaza are “simply false,” and that Israel facilitated over 713 trucks into the north in October. He said across Gaza, a dozen bakeries produce pita bread, and overall, Israel is allowing aid in through multiple crossing points, including the Kissufim crossing to central Gaza, which was opened on Tuesday after having been shuttered 19 years ago.
“Are these the actions of a state wishing to cause a famine?” Danon asked.
Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour said Israel should allow international journalists into Gaza to see for themselves whether there is famine or not.
“We need international media, independent media, to go and to document exactly what is happening,” Mansour told reporters. “It is genocide in northern Gaza, and we need the international media to go and tell the story.”
In 13 months of war, Israel has allowed only a few handpicked reporters to accompany its troops into Gaza on brief tours to see the Hamas tunnels. It has also shuttered the bureau of Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera in Israel. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 137 journalists and media workers have been killed, nearly all of them Palestinian.
As the situation worsens, the Security Council’s 10 elected members are working on a draft resolution on the protection of civilians in the conflict and the need for an immediate cease-fire, release of hostages and scaling up of aid.
Biden reaffirms support for Israel
President Joe Biden reiterated his support of Israel during a Tuesday Oval Office meeting with Israel’s president and echoed the wish to see the return of the remaining hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza for more than a year.
“My commitment to Israel is ironclad,” Biden told President Isaac Herzog during their morning meeting in the White House. “And we share a deep friendship.”
Herzog underscored his government’s main objective: “First and foremost, we have to get the hostages back.”
As President-elect Donald Trump begins to put his government together, his transition office announced Tuesday that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is his nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, and real estate investor Steve Witkoff will be his special envoy to the Middle East.
Air strikes in Gaza, Beirut
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 14 people in Gaza on Tuesday, Palestinian authorities said, while in Lebanon, plumes of smoke rose above Beirut’s southern suburbs less than an hour after Israeli forces told residents to evacuate.
A strike early Tuesday hit a house at a refugee camp in central Gaza, killing three people, according to Al-Awda Hospital, which received the casualties.
Israel's new defense minister, Israel Katz, said on X that during a meeting with military officials Tuesday, he reiterated that Israel will continue hitting Hezbollah with full force, and that there will be no cease-fire in Lebanon.
The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, although about one-third of them are believed to be dead.
Israel's counteroffensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas militants.
The war spread to Lebanon in mid-September, after months of rocket fire from Hezbollah into Israel and drone and airstrikes by Israel’s military in south Lebanon escalated. More than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed, most of them in the past six weeks.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.
VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell and United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Information from The Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
