The U.S. will not change its policy on arms transfers to Israel even though the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip remains dire, the State Department said Tuesday, the deadline the White House set for Israel to ramp up access to aid in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters the decision came as "Israel has taken a number of steps" outlined in a letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Israeli counterparts last month. "We continue to be in discussion with Israel about the steps they took and other steps they need to take," he said.
An average of just over 30 trucks a day have been let into Gaza in recent weeks, representing “just over six percent of the daily needs,” according to Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
“What is being allowed into Gaza is not enough,” he wrote Friday on X.
Before Israel launched its offensive in Gaza, around 500 trucks entered the enclave each day, according to the British Red Cross.
Tuesday's deadline was set by Washington for Israel to meet a host of requirements aimed at boosting aid into Gaza or face restrictions on U.S. military assistance, as required under U.S. law. American spending on Israel’s military operations reached more than $17.9 billion from Oct. 7 last year to Sept. 30, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
Over the weekend, the World Health Organization warned that northern Gaza in particular is at risk of imminent famine as the area falls under heavy Israeli bombardment.
Germany, a firm ally of Israel and one of its leading weapons suppliers, on Sunday issued unusually critical comments about Israeli actions in Gaza.
“At no time in the past 12 months has so little help reached the Gaza Strip as is the case at the moment,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said. “Israel’s right to self-defence is limited by international humanitarian law, which includes the stipulation that humanitarian access must be guaranteed at all times and must never be used as a method of warfare. Time and again, promises have been made and not kept.”
Meanwhile, Israel has informed the United Nations that it planned to sever ties entirely with UNRWA, which has long played a vital role in aid distribution in the enclave, including during Israel’s more than yearlong offensive in Gaza.
According to a copy published by Axios, the letter from Blinkin and Austin to their Israeli counterparts last month noted that Washington must continually assess whether Israel is “directly or indirectly” impeding the transport of U.S. aid to Gaza — a requirement stemming from Provision 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, under which the U.S. is prevented from providing military assistance to a country that restricts the delivery of humanitarian aid, unless a national security waiver is issued.
NBC News has not seen an original copy of the letter and the Pentagon could not confirm to NBC News whether the letter published by Axios was the final version sent to the Israeli officials.
Meanwhile, fears are growing that pressure to address the spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza will fade as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office.
“Israel hasn’t come close to allowing the amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza that the Biden administration says is a requirement for ongoing U.S. military aid,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Monday. “Indeed, if anything, the starvation and deprivation in northern Gaza have gotten worse.”
Roth, who is now a visiting professor at Princeton University, warned that now, with the Biden administration on its way out and Trump, a strong ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on his way in, it is unlikely that Netanyahu will be feeling much pressure to fulfill the requirements outlined by Washington.
"The Netanyahu government is thumbing its nose at the Biden administration," Roth said, calling it "a predictable result of the Biden administration setting its ultimatum for a compliance date after the U.S. election."
"Now that Trump has won, Netanyahu can just wait out any cutoff of (military) aid, counting on Trump to restore in it a couple of months," he said.
On Nov. 4, the day before the U.S. election, the Biden administration said Israel had so far "failed" to do enough to improve access to aid in Gaza.
"Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy under NSM-20 and relevant U.S. law,” the U.S. secretaries warned according to a source familiar with the letter. The source verified the contents of the letter as first reported by Axios.
Last week, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Israel had taken “a number of important steps” to increase humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including opening more roads and a fifth crossing, but “what we want to see over the coming days and coming weeks is to see these new routes actually have more humanitarian assistance delivered over them.”
Miller declined to say whether the U.S. would go so far as to restrict U.S. military aid if the Israelis failed to meet their list of requests to improve the situation for Palestinian civilians.
More than 43,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in the enclave following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials, in an assault that marked a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.
The United Nations said over the weekend that women and children make up more than 70% of those who have been killed in Gaza since the war began.
Israeli officials did not immediately comment on the State Department's decision.
