US says Israel not impeding assistance to Gaza, aid groups slam statement

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo by Reuters

By Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden's administration has concluded that Israel is not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore is not violating U.S. law, the State Department said on Tuesday, even as Washington acknowledged the humanitarian situation remained dire in the Palestinian enclave.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in an Oct. 13 letter gave their Israeli counterparts a list of specific steps that Israel needed to do within 30 days to address the worsening situation in Gaza. Failure to do so may have possible consequences on U.S. military aid to Israel, they said in the letter.

On Tuesday, as the deadline mentioned in the letter expired, State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel repeatedly declined to say if the criteria had been fulfilled. But he told reporters that Israel had taken steps to address the demands and that Washington 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 U.S. intervention, these changes may not have ever taken place," Patel said, adding that Washington would continue to assess Israel's compliance with U.S. law.

Eight international aid groups, including Oxfam and Save the Children, said in a report that Israel had failed to meet the demands by the Tuesday deadline.

In a later statement on Tuesday, the Palestinian Hamas militant movement that rules Gaza criticized the Biden administration's assertion that Israel had taken measures to improve the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

The assessment was "an affirmation of President Biden's complete partnership in the brutal genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip," Hamas said.

The group again accused Washington of providing political and military cover for Israel and protecting it from being held accountable.

Biden, whose term ends soon, has offered strong backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then. Gaza 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.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a Nov. 4 briefing that despite Israel's measures to increase aid access the results on the ground in Gaza were not good enough.

Blinken in a meeting with Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer on Monday also emphasized the need for Israel's steps to lead to improvements on the ground.

Patel declined to say why Washington chose to make its assessment based on Israel's measures to address the problems instead of results on the ground, which U.S. officials have repeatedly said would be their measuring stick.

ISRAEL'S STEPS

On Tuesday, Patel said Israel had taken some steps, including reopening the Erez crossing, waiving certain customs requirements, and opening additional delivery routes within Gaza.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israeli humanitarian efforts over the past six months, "highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches."

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon welcomed the statement from the State Department. "We work very closely with our allies in Washington," he told reporters. "We did a lot. We worked very hard in order to assist the humanitarian needs in Gaza."

"It's challenging ... because on the other side, you have Hamas. So even if we allow trucks to cross the checkpoints, Hamas will hijack the trucks, and sometimes even when we do 100% we cannot guarantee the results," he added.

The U.S. deadline expired just days after global food security experts said there was a "strong likelihood that famine is imminent" in parts of northern Gaza, as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area.

For more than a month, Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into northern Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and displacing new waves of people in an operation they say is designed to prevent Hamas fighters regrouping.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Katharine Jackson and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington, additional reporting by Jaidaa Taha; Editing by David Gregorio, Deepa Babington and Rosalba O'Brien)