Blinken: US to track Israel’s Gaza aid distribution, urges war pause for relief

The United States will follow Israel’s actions daily to make sure it is improving the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.

“Israel has to meet these [humanitarian] responsibilities, and we will be tracking this every single day,” Blinken said.

He spoke just one day after the Biden administration backed away from its threat to link Israeli military aid to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Last week, the independent Famine Review Committee of experts assessed that “There is a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip.

Blinken told reporters, however, that Israel was working on 12 of the 15 steps the US had outlined in the letter it sent Jerusalem last month, warning of the danger of restricted military aid.

The US has clarified to Israel that the required measures have to be “fully implemented” and that “they need to be sustained,” Blinken stated.

Extended war pause in Gaza

Outstanding issues involve evacuation and pause to the war for humanitarian assistance as well as the entry of commercial goods and looting, he said.

“Right now, there are 900 trucks that are inside of Gaza at Kerem Shalom, which is backed up. [The humanitarian aid] can’t be distributed because of this looting and because of the criminality. So it is imperative that this be addressed,” Blinken said.

The US is working with both Israel and Egypt to address this, he added.

Blinken stressed in particular the importance of an “extended pause to the war” and, ultimately, the need to end the war itself, explaining that this was the best way to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people.

“The situation is so difficult and so dramatic that to fully redress it, to fully answer the needs of people, the best way to do that is to end the war,” Blinken said.

It’s the US assessment that Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” when it embarked on a campaign to ensure that October 7 would never happen again.

Israel had wanted to dismantle Hamas’s military organization and to get the leadership responsible for October 7, Blinken said.

“It’s done both of those things,” he added.

“This should be a time to end the war,” which means the hostages must “come home,” including the seven with American citizenship.

A “day after” plan must also be in place, Blinken said.

“This is something I’ve been working on intensely in recent weeks so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going to go back in.”

THE UNITED Nations Security Council met late Tuesday night in New York on the issue of Gaza hunger, with a number of UN briefings describing the dire hardships Palestinians face.

The 10 non-permanent council members are pushing for a resolution on the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

“Men, women, boys, and girls are effectively starving as the conflict rages,” said Rein Paulsen, who is the director of the Office for Emergencies and Resilience, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Close to 70% of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged or destroyed, as had nearly 95% of its cattle, he explained.

Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya said, “As I brief you, Israeli authorities are blocking humanitarian assistance from entering north Gaza, where fighting continues, and around 75,000 people remain with dwindling water and food supplies.”

Israel’s plan to close the United Nations Relief and Works Operation in Gaza by the end of January would be, she said, “another devastating blow to efforts to provide lifesaving aid and avert the threat of famine.”

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “There is no need to mince words here. As we heard from our briefers, the situation in northern Gaza is dire; catastrophic, as we heard from Ms. Msuya. An unconscionable number of Palestinian civilians, many women and children, have been killed.

“And according to the latest assessment from the IPC, nearly every civilian in Gaza is without adequate food, medication, clean drinking water, or housing. They simply cannot be left to suffer indefinitely,” she said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said that the independent report warning of impending famine in Gaza was a “true master class in misinformation, bias, and dishonest reporting.”

It is an “exercise in slander” disguised as humanitarian concern, he said.

The report on impending famine does not examine the role Hamas has played in preventing aid, he said.

“Since early October, Israel has facilitated the entry of over 713 trucks of aid to northern Gaza alone, with the goal of sustaining a steady flow of fifty trucks daily,” Danon said.

“We have delivered essential food, water, and medical supplies to areas such as Beit Lahiya and Jabalya in northern Gaza, where around 10,000 civilians remain.

“Across Gaza, 12 bakeries are operational, producing massive quantities of bread for the population,” he added.

The UN has not distinguished between those agencies that are working to distribute aid and those who are more concerned with bashing Israel, Danon said.