WASHINGTON: Halfway through the Biden administration’s 30-day ultimatum for Israel to surge the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding, Israel is falling far short, an Associated Press review of UN and Israeli data shows.
Israel also has missed some other deadlines and demands outlined in a Oct. 13 letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The mid-November deadline — following the US election — may serve as a final test of President Joe Biden ‘s willingness to check a close ally that has shrugged off repeated US appeals to protect Palestinian civilians during the war against Hamas.
In their letter, Blinken and Austin demanded improvements to the deteriorating humanitarian condition in Gaza, saying that Israel must allow in a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying desperately needed food and other supplies. By the end of October, an average of just 71 trucks a day were entering Gaza, according to the latest UN figures.
Blinken said the State Department and Pentagon were closely following Israel’s response to the letter, including speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top aide on Friday.
“There’s been progress, but it’s insufficient, and we’re working on a daily basis to make sure Israel does what it must do to ensure that this assistance gets to people who need it inside of Gaza,” Blinken told reporters Thursday.
“It’s not enough to get trucks to Gaza. It’s vital that what they bring with them can get distributed effectively inside of Gaza,” he added.
Blinken and Austin’s letter marked one of the toughest stands the Biden administration has taken in a year of appeals and warnings to Israel to lessen the harm to Palestinian civilians.
Support for Israel is a bedrock issue for many Republican voters and some Democrats. That makes any Biden administration decision on restricting military funding a fraught one for the tight presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
In hard-hit north Gaza in particular, an escalated Israeli military campaign and restrictions on aid have kept all food and other care from reaching populated areas since mid-October, aid organizations say. It could set the stage for famine in coming weeks or months, international monitors say.
Leaders of 15 UN and humanitarian groups, including the World Food Program and World Health Organization, warned Friday that “the situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic.”
And despite US objections, Israeli lawmakers this week voted effectively to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. Governments worldwide, the UN and aid organizations say cutting off UNRWA would shatter the aid networks struggling to get food and other supplies to people in Gaza.
“Catastrophic,” Amber Alayyan, a medical program manager for Gaza at Doctors Without Borders, said of the move.
Humanitarian officials are deeply skeptical Israel will significantly improve assistance to Gaza’s civilians even with the US warning — or that the Biden administration will do anything if it doesn’t.
At this point in the war, “neither of those has happened,” said Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization.
“Over and over and again, we’ve been told” by Biden administration officials “that there are processes to evaluate the situation on the ground” in Gaza “and some movement’s been made to implement US law, and time and again that has not happened,” Paul said.
Before the war, an average of 500 trucks daily brought aid into the territory. Relief groups have said that’s the minimum needed for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, most of whom have since been uprooted from their homes, often multiple times.
There has never been a month where Israel came close to meeting that figure since the conflict began, peaking in April at 225 trucks a day, according to Israeli government figures.
By the time Blinken and Austin sent their letter this month, concerns were rising that aid restrictions were starving civilians. The number of aid trucks that Israel has allowed into Gaza has plunged since last spring and summer, falling to a daily average of just 13 a day by the beginning of October, according to UN figures.
By the end of the month, it rose to an average of 71 trucks a day, the UN figures show.
Once supplies get to Gaza, groups still face obstacles distributing the aid to warehouses and then to people in need, organizations and the State Department said this week. That includes slow Israeli processing, Israeli restrictions on shipments, lawlessness and other obstacles, aid groups said.
Data from COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, shows aid has fallen to under a third of its levels in September and August. In September, 87,446 tons of aid entered the Gaza Strip. In October, 26,399 tons got in.
Elad Goren, a senior COGAT official, said last week that aid delivery and distribution in the north have been mainly confined to Gaza City.
When asked why aid was not being delivered to other parts of the north — like Jabaliya, a crowded urban refugee camp where Israel is staging an offensive — he said the population there was being evacuated and those who remained had “enough assistance” from previous months.
In other areas like Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, Goren claimed falsely there was “no population” left.
COGAT declined to comment on the standard in the US letter. It said it was complying with government directives on aid to Gaza. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon blamed Hamas for plundering aid.
Paul of Oxfam said no aid at all was reaching populated areas in northern Gaza and only small amounts were getting to Gaza City.
“No way” has Israel made progress in getting humanitarian support to the hundreds of thousands of people in north Gaza in particular since the US ultimatum, said Alayyan of Doctors Without Borders.
Israel’s government appeared to blow past another deadline set in Austin and Blinken’s letter. It called for Israel to set up a senior-level channel for US officials to raise concerns about reported harm to Palestinian civilians and hold a first meeting by the end of October.
No such channel — requested repeatedly by the US during the war — had been created by the final day of the month.
The US is by far the biggest provider of arms and other military aid to Israel, including nearly $18 billion during the war in Gaza, according to a study for Brown University’s Costs of War project.
The Biden administration paused a planned shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel last spring, citing concerns for civilians in an Israeli offensive.
In a formal review in May, the administration concluded that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but said wartime conditions prevented officials from determining that for certain in specific strikes.
Israel is falling far short of a US ultimatum to surge aid to Gaza
https://arab.news/c4xt5
Israel is falling far short of a US ultimatum to surge aid to Gaza

- In a letter earlier, US officials demanded that Israel allow in a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying desperately needed food and other supplies
- By the end of October, an average of just 71 trucks a day were entering Gaza, according to the latest UN figures
Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak resigns

Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the prime minister of Yemen's internationally recognized government, said on Saturday he had submitted his resignation.
In a statement, Mubarak said he had faced "lots of difficulties", including being unable to reshuffle the government.
MSF says its hospital bombed in South Sudan
JUBA: Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said one of its hospitals in South Sudan had been bombed early on Saturday, leading to the loss of all its medical supplies.
“At 4 am today, MSF’s hospital in Old Fangak, South Sudan, was bombed. The pharmacy was destroyed. All medical supplies lost. There are reports of people killed and injured,” the medical charity said in a statement.
UN chief condemns Israeli strikes on Syria

- Antonio Guterres ‘alarmed’ over reports of sectarian violence around Damascus, Suwayda
- UN commission ‘deeply troubled’ after more than 100 people were killed in clashes this week
NEW YORK CITY: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syria as well as growing sectarian violence around Damascus and Suwayda.
The condemnation came after more than 100 people were killed in clashes in the Syrian Arab Republic over the past week.
The violence has taken place in two predominantly Druze suburbs of the capital, Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, as well as in the southern Druze stronghold of Suwayda.
Guterres “has been monitoring with alarm the reports of violence in the suburbs of Damascus and in the south of Syria, including reports of civilian casualties and assassination of local administration figures,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.
The secretary-general condemned “all violence against civilians” and acts that “could risk inflaming sectarian tensions.”
Amid the sectarian clashes, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Syrian targets, in what it described as an attempt to protect the country’s Druze minority.
Early on Friday, it bombed an area near the Presidential Palace in Damascus. Later that day, it targeted the Damascus, Hama and Daraa countryside, killing one civilian in the former and injuring four people in Hama, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
Israel acknowledged the strikes, which it claimed targeted “a military site, anti-aircraft cannons and surface-to-air missile infrastructure.”
It followed a warning by Tel Aviv earlier this week that it would attack sites controlled by Syria’s new government if further sectarian clashes involving the Druze minority did not stop.
Guterres condemned Israel’s violation of Syria’s sovereignty and said it was “essential” that the attacks stop. He called on all parties to “cease all hostilities, exercise utmost restraint and avoid further escalation.”
Syria’s interim authorities under the government of President Ahmad Al-Sharaa must “transparently and openly” investigate all violations of peace in a bid to uphold their commitment to “dialogue and cooperation within the framework of national unity,” Guterres added.
On Friday, experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council on the Commission of Inquiry on Syria described the surge in sectarian violence as “deeply troubling.”
The commission was established in 2011, and its three commissioners serve in an independent capacity.
“The spread of discriminatory incitement and hate speech, including through social media, is fueling violence and risks threating Syria’s fragile social cohesion,” the commission said on Friday. “While the situation remains fluid and an agreement has reportedly been reached between prominent leaders in Suwayda and the authorities in Damascus, the commission underscores that the interim government remains responsible for ensuring the protection of all civilians in areas under its control. Impunity for grave violations has in the past been a consistent driver of Syria’s conflict and must not be allowed to persist.”
The commission also highlighted the risk posed by Israeli airstrikes, as well as Tel Aviv’s continued expansion of its occupation in the Golan Heights.
Israel’s attempts to “divide various Syrian communities risks further destabilizing Syria,” it said.
“Syria’s recent history should serve as a reminder that external interventions have often led to increased violence, displacement and fragmentation.”
Sudan paramilitary drone strike hits border city near Eritrea: govt source

KHARTOUM: Sudanese paramilitaries have carried out a rare drone strike on the eastern city of Kassala, near the Eritrean border, a source from the rival army-aligned government said Saturday.
“A drone targeted the fuel storage area at Kassala airport,” the government source told AFP, blaming it on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and reporting no casualties or damage.
Gaza rescuers say three babies among 11 killed in Israel strike

- An overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people
- Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce
GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Saturday that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people including three babies up to a year old.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal reported 11 killed “after the bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in the Khan Yunis camp” in southern Gaza at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT).
Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and girl, both one-year-olds, and a month-old baby.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce in its war against Hamas that was triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack.
On Friday the civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people across the war-ravaged territory, which has been under a total Israeli blockade since March 2.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza, saying Hamas had diverted supplies. Israel says the blockade is meant to pressure the militants into releasing hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
UN agencies have urged Israel to lift restrictions, saying that Gazans were experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe and warning of famine.