ISRAEL has failed to meet US demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip where conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month war, international aid organisations said today.
This came as Israeli strikes in Gaza killed dozens of people, including at an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone.
Last month the Biden administration called on Israel to “surge” more food and other emergency aid into Gaza, giving it a 30-day deadline that expired today.
It warned that failure to comply could trigger US laws requiring it to scale back military support as Israel wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of military aid to Israel.
Tuesday’s report, authored by eight international aid organisations, listed 19 measures of compliance with the US demands. It said Israel had failed to comply with 15 and only partially complied with four.
An October 13 letter from the US called on Israel to, among other things, allow a minimum of 350 truckloads of goods to enter Gaza each day and ensure access for aid groups to hard-hit northern Gaza.
“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,” the report said.
“That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago.”
The report was co-signed by Anera, Care, MedGlobal, Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International and Save the Children.
An Israeli strike late on Monday hit a makeshift cafeteria used by displaced people in Muwasi, the centre of a “humanitarian zone” that Israel’s military declared earlier in the war.
At least 11 people were killed, including two children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the casualties were taken. Video from the scene showed men pulling bloodied wounded from among tables and chairs set up in the sand in an enclosure made of corrugated metal sheets.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, another 11 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a three-wheeled vehicle with a trailer known as a tuk-tuk, according to the Nasser Hospital. Tuk-tuks are widely used as taxis in Gaza.
Another strike early on Tuesday hit a house in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing three people including a woman, according to al-Awda Hospital, which received the casualties. The strike also wounded 11 others, it said.
