Key Points
- The US says it won't suspend military assistance to Israel after finding it has not violated US law.
- A 30-day deadline for Israel to improve aid to the region set by the US in October passed on Tuesday.
- Aid groups said Israel failed to meet the US demands and took actions to "dramatically" worsen the situation.
United States President Joe Biden's administration has concluded that Israel is not violating US law regarding aid access in Gaza, but his government has acknowledged the humanitarian situation remains dire in the Palestinian enclave.
The conclusion comes as a 30-day deadline given to Israel by the US to address the comes to an end.
On 13 October, US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin handed Israel a list of specific steps to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza or face cuts to US military assistance.
The deadline follows the independent Famine Review Committee, which
assesses findings by the internationally recognised standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said there is a "strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas" of northern Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, published on Saturday a list of Israel's humanitarian efforts over the past six months, "highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches".
The Israeli agency said that "all projections by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground".
COGAT said Israel's military "operates and will continue to operate in accordance with international law to facilitate and ease the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza".
The amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year, according to United Nations data.
The UN has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to Gaza's north.
Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, told a Geneva press briefing that aid trucks into the Gaza Strip had fallen in October and that no food was allowed to enter northern Gaza for an entire month.
"The people here need everything. They need more. It's not enough," she said.
Asked what she expected the US to do about the deadline, Wateridge said: "Anything that happens now is already too late. Thousands and thousands of people have been killed senselessly. They have been killed because there is a lack of aid, because the bombs have continued and because we have not been able to even reach them under the rubble."
US findings
Speaking on Tuesday, US state department spokesperson Vedant Patel repeatedly declined to confirm whether Israel had met the specific criteria set by the US. Instead, he told reporters that Israel has taken steps to address the demands and that the US would continue to assess the situation.
"We've seen some progress being made. We would like to see some more changes happen. We believe that had it not been for US intervention, these changes may not have ever taken place," Patel said.
Patel said Israel had taken some steps, including reopening the Erez Crossing, waiving certain customs requirements and opening additional delivery routes within Gaza.
For more than a month, Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into north Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and displacing new waves of people in an operation they say is designed to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.
International aid groups said Israel had failed to meet the series of US demands intended to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by the Tuesday deadline.
"Israel not only failed to meet the US 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," a group of eight aid groups, including Oxfam, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a 19-page report.
Patel, pressed by reporters, declined to explain why the US based its assessment on Israel's actions rather than actual results on the ground, which US officials had previously cited as the measure.
Biden, whose term ends soon, has offered strong backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to the Israeli government.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The enclave 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.
