Aid Deliveries to Gaza Remain Low Despite U.S. Warning to Israel

Despite a U.S. deadline to allow more aid into Gaza, Israel was still letting significantly less food and supplies into the territory than in the months before the warning, according to official Israeli figures.

In an Oct. 13 letter signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, the Biden administration gave Israel 30 days to increase the flow of aid or face a possible cutoff in military assistance. It warned that aid shipments into Gaza in September had reached their lowest level at any time since the early months of the war.

More trucks began to enter Gaza in the past several weeks, and in the days before the American deadline, Israel announced a handful of policy changes. But the total amount of aid and commercial goods into Gaza since Oct. 13 has been substantially lower than what the Biden administration had demanded, and far lower than it was even in September.

Despite that, the Biden administration said on Tuesday it did not plan to follow through on its threat to cut military assistance after the deadline expired.

Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said on Tuesday that Israel had instituted important changes but that “there needs to be more progress.” He added that the administration had not assessed Israel to be in violation of U.S. law.

The sharp decline in the entry of food, medical supplies and other necessities coincided with an Israeli decision in early October to block commerce into the territory, arguing that Hamas was profiting off the trade. Israel recently launched a major offensive against Hamas in North Gaza that has driven tens of thousands from their homes.

Israeli officials say they do not restrict the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza and argue that aid agencies should be doing more. But the Israeli decision to bar commercial goods was a blow.

According to data made publicly available by the Israeli military, the amount of what it calls “humanitarian goods” entering Gaza — including donated aid and commercial goods sold in markets — fell to 52,000 metric tons from Oct. 1 through Nov. 10 from about 87,000 metric tons in the month of September.

“Things were looking much better,” said Muhannad Hadi, a top United Nations relief official in Jerusalem. “But now, suddenly, everything has collapsed.”

A United Nations-backed panel warned last week that famine was imminent in the northern Gaza Strip, saying that 13 months of war had created “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine” because of the “rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.” Israel has criticized that report as based on “partial, biased data and superficial sources.”

Before Israel’s latest offensive in the north, Gazans across the enclave had begun to see nearly forgotten luxuries like fresh fruit and frozen chicken appear in local markets, albeit at inflated prices, mostly imported by businessmen in Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Ayed Abu Ramadan, who leads the Gaza Chamber of Commerce, recalled that a pound of apples could cost as little as $1.60 in late September. But when Israel halted the flow of commercial goods, the markets quickly emptied.

“Now, almost nothing is left,” he said. “And anything that remains is mind-bogglingly expensive.”

Israel has not offered a public explanation for the ban on commercial goods. But an Israeli official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to comply with Israeli policy, said the authorities banned trade with Gaza because Hamas had been making money by extorting Palestinian importers. Hamas has denied those claims in the past.

Israel has decimated Hamas’s rule in Gaza, but Israel’s soldiers do not enforce law and order. As the price of goods has skyrocketed, so has the profit to be made by pillaging aid convoys, with trucks that ferry valuable commodities emerging as a key target for organized gangs, according to Israeli officials, aid organizations and Gazan civilians and businessmen.

Israeli forces sometimes target Hamas militants seeking to divert aid, but they do not conduct military operations against criminal gangs, the Israeli official said.

Izzat Aqel, a Gazan businessman with a trucking company, said his drivers were increasingly unwilling to work the perilous routes. This month, one of his convoys in southern Gaza was attacked by armed men who shot out the wheels of the vehicles, forcing them to grind to a halt, before stripping them of their aid, he said.

With no way forward, what little aid has entered the Gaza Strip is often stuck at crossings into the enclave.

Aid officials and many donor governments, among them the United States, have blamed Israel for putting up obstacles to providing aid, including by blocking essential items and imposing a byzantine assortment of security restrictions at nearly every stage of the process. Delays have also come from Egypt, where some of the aid is collected before being sent on to Gaza.

In a statement last month, the Israeli military said it “does not restrict the entry of civilian supplies” into Gaza, but requires permits for items that it considers “dual use,” civilian products and supplies that it says can also be used for military purposes, “given Hamas’s deliberate diversion of such goods from civilian to military applications.”

In its Oct. 13 letter, the Biden administration asked Israel to take 16 concrete steps in Gaza, including enabling the entry of at least 350 aid trucks per day. It also called for Israel to remove restrictions, including rules about what kinds of trucks can be used to deliver aid and what items are considered dual use; and to ensure that humanitarian groups have “continuous access” to northern Gaza.

Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin wrote that Israel had managed to facilitate the vaccination of more than 560,000 children in Gaza against polio. Israel had “recently demonstrated,” it said, “what is possible and necessary to ensure” civilians receive assistance.

Israel had fulfilled some of the American demands, including opening a new border crossing at Kissufim, in central Gaza, on Tuesday for the first time since 2005. It also expanded an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in central Gaza, another U.S. stipulation meant to allow displaced Gazans sheltering there to move farther inland ahead of the rainy winter.

Israel has also admitted some convoys into northern Gaza, including what the military agency overseeing the aid effort said was hundreds of food and water packages on Tuesday.

But Israel’s military still tightly restricts access to northern Gaza, citing the continuing fighting. The Israeli official also said that Israel would not immediately comply with other requests, such as easing restrictions on what trucks can be used, citing security reasons. According to Israeli military data, 1,789 trucks were let into Gaza in October and 961 in the first 10 days of November.

“Continuous access” to the north has not been permitted, and the areas most affected by the fighting have been off-limits to aid workers for weeks, Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, UNRWA, said last week.

According to an internal U.N. report compiled last week, meat, fish and fruit are now largely unavailable in Gaza. The vegetables available were on sale for extremely high prices: The price of cucumbers has risen 650 percent since the start of the war, the price of tomatoes by 2,900 percent and the price of onions by 4,900 percent.

In interviews, Gazans said they struggled with a lack of goods, but also with the runaway inflation, for which they blamed unscrupulous businessmen and armed gangs.

“We are sitting here day after day just waiting on those trucks,” said Taghreed al-Barawi, 31, who lives in the southern city of Khan Younis. “People say they are on their way.”

Bilal Shbair contributed reporting from Deir al Balah in Gaza, and Lauren Leatherby from London.