50 aid trucks fall significantly short of 350 needed per day
Here’s the reality. Over the last 24 hours, about 50 trucks of aid have gone into Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip. But in the letter sent to the Israelis, which was meant to be a private letter, the US said that they’d like to see somewhere in the region of 350 trucks going in a day.
So you can see they are significantly short of the aid that is required. And this is the situation that has been repeated since May when the number of aid trucks went down. In September, there were 300 over the course of the month, and in the first 14 days of October, no aid went into northern Gaza at all.
From the United Nations, we know that somewhere in the region of 2.2 million people are either facing extreme food insecurity or the possibility of famine.
The State Department believes that the letter sent by the two secretaries of state and defence will get the Israelis’ attention to try and address the real critical issue of aid into Gaza. They have been given a deadline of 30 days to do it. The situation has improved in the last 24 hours. They want to see that continue and expand.
Timing of US aid ultimatum to Israel ‘troubling’, says analyst
Israel is likely to increase aid to Gaza “just enough so that they can avoid the kind of disaster that the Biden administration is asking them to avoid”, Joshua Landis, director of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma, told Al Jazeera.
The timing of a leaked letter from the Biden administration, giving Israel 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, is “troubling” because it creates a deadline after the US elections, Landis added.
Yet, while Landis noted many US voters are “disconcerted and heartbroken” by the humanitarian situation in Gaza, he said it was unlikely there would be any “major change” in Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s positions before the election, given billionaire donors are “really driving both sides” as “both candidates are scrambling to get donations”.
“If she wins the election, she will be able to deal with Israel in a little tougher manner,” Landis added.
EU criticises US for giving Israel a month to improve Gaza’s humanitarian situation
The EU’s foreign policy chief has criticised the United States for allowing Israel an entire month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay,” Josep Borrell told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels.
“One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It’s too many people,” Borrell added, calling the situation a “catastrophe”.
US officials told Israel on Wednesday it must take steps in the next month to improve the humanitarian conditions in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid – the strongest warning since the war began a year ago.
Humanitarian groups have accused Israel of deliberately starving and forcibly displacing Palestinians in northern Gaza.
US will not consider Israel arms embargo, Biden official tells aid groups: Report
The US will not consider imposing an arms embargo on Israel despite its restrictions on aid entering Gaza, the Biden administration’s Middle East aid envoy told humanitarian groups, according to a report by US outlet Politico.
Sources, speaking anonymously due to concerns that their work in Gaza may be hindered for speaking out, said that Lise Grande, Biden’s special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, met with humanitarian groups in Washington in August.
In that meeting, Grande told them Israel is part of a “tight circle of very few allies” to whom Washington would not refuse aid.
On October 13, senior Biden administration officials sent a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warning that Washington’s supply of weapons to Israel was at risk if it did not take significant steps to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis within 30 days.
It all reads more like a plea from the US not to starve people too much before the elections... All PR, zero humanity.
