US finds Israel is not impeding assistance to Gaza; aid groups disagree

US President Joe Biden's administration has concluded Israel is not impeding assistance to Gaza and is not violating US law, the state department said on Tuesday as Washington acknowledged the humanitarian situation remained dire in the Palestinian enclave.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin in an October 13 letter gave their Israeli counterparts a list of specific steps  Israel needed to do within 30 days to address the worsening situation in Gaza. Failure to do so may have possible consequences on US military aid to Israel, they said in the letter.

On Tuesday, as the deadline mentioned in the letter expired, state department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel repeatedly declined to say if the criteria had been fulfilled. He told reporters Israel had taken steps to address the demands and Washington would continue to assess the situation.

“We've seen some progress being made. We would like to see more changes happen. We believe had it not been for US intervention, the changes may not have ever taken place,” Patel said, adding Washington would continue to assess Israel's compliance with US law.

Eight international aid groups, including Oxfam and Save the Children, said in a report Israel had failed to meet the demands by the Tuesday deadline.

In a later statement on Tuesday, the Palestinian Hamas militant movement that rules Gaza criticised the Biden administration's assertion that Israel had taken measures to improve the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

The assessment was “an affirmation of President Biden's complete partnership in the brutal genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas said.

The group again accused Washington of providing political and military cover for Israel and protecting it from being held accountable.

Biden, whose term ends soon, has offered strong backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then. Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble where more than 2-million Gazans seek shelter as best they can.

State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a November 4 briefing that despite Israel's measures to increase aid access, the results on the ground in Gaza were not good enough.

Blinken in a meeting on Monday with Israel's minister of strategic affairs Ron Dermer also emphasised the need for Israel's steps to lead to improvements on the ground.

Patel declined to say why Washington chose to make its assessment based on Israel's measures to address the problems instead of results on the ground, which US officials have repeatedly said would be their measuring stick.

On Tuesday, Patel said Israel had taken some steps, including reopening the Erez crossing, waiving certain customs requirements and opening additional delivery routes within Gaza.

Cogat, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israeli humanitarian efforts over the past six months, “highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches”.

Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon welcomed the statement from the state department.

“We work very closely with our allies in Washington,” he told reporters.

“We did a lot. We worked very hard to assist the humanitarian needs in Gaza.”

“It's challenging because on the other side you have Hamas. Even if we allow trucks to cross the checkpoints, Hamas will hijack the trucks, and sometimes even when we do 100% we cannot guarantee the results,” he said.

The US deadline expired days after global food security experts said there was a “strong likelihood famine is imminent” in parts of northern Gaza, as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area.

For more than a month, Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into northern Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and displacing new waves of people in an operation they said is designed to prevent Hamas fighters regrouping.

Reuters