With Gaza aid flows rising, U.S. to push Israel to speed distribution

AMMAN, Jordan - The United States will press Israel to ensure humanitarian aid is effectively distributed within Gaza, Secretary of State Blinken said Tuesday, forecasting upcoming talks as the Biden administration seeks to turn tentative increases in aid shipments into more widespread improvements for desperate civilians.

U.N. humanitarian officials briefed Blinken in the Jordanian capital about their efforts to improve conditions in Gaza, where hunger, disease and suffering are rampant following six-plus months of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants.

“We have to make sure that our focus is … on impact and really measuring whether the aid that people need is actually getting to them,” Blinken told reporters.

Blinken said additional trucks, drivers and fuel must be let into Gaza to enable adequate distribution, along with steps to better deconflict military and humanitarian operations amid an ongoing conflict in which aid workers have repeatedly been injured or killed.

He said he intends to speak with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials about “the things [that] still need to be done if the test is going to be met of making sure that people have what they need.”

Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv late Tuesday and is scheduled to hold meetings throughout the day Wednesday. President Biden warned Netanyahu in early April that Washington would reassess its policy toward the war unless Israel made immediate “measurable” changes to address the widespread civilian suffering in Gaza.

“It’s about taking the practical, concrete steps that are necessary to make this work as effectively as it possibly can. And I heard a determination to do that,” Blinken said after talks with Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Gaza. “I’m going to make sure that Israel has the same determination, because that’s the only thing that counts.”

Israel has said it is working to improve aid delivery and to make the humanitarian situation a priority but has cited what it says are U.N. logistical failings. Israeli officials have previously accused the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of diverting aid to Hamas; U.S. officials have said they have detected no proof of that.

Blinken, making his seventh trip to the Middle East since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 set off the war, spoke outside a warehouse operated by a Jordanian government charity that supplies food, medicine and other aid to Gaza.

Officials said trucks departing the facility Tuesday would represent the first direct shipment of aid from Jordan to Erez, a border crossing point into Gaza that Israel announced it would reopen in April without having to go first to Kerem Shalom, until now the chief Israeli inspection point.

Blinken’s latest regional visit comes amid last-ditch efforts to secure a deal that would release some of the hostages taken by Hamas and avert an imminent Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Gazans are sheltering. Aid officials fear that such an operation could wipe out humanitarian gains and thrust hundreds of thousands of people back into the crossfire.

The issues of Gazans’ access to aid and the safety of civilians have emerged as major points of tension between the Biden administration and Netanyahu’s far-right government in the months since Israel launched its military response to the Hamas cross-border attacks that killed 1,200 people. Palestinian authorities say more than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza during that time.

The worsening conditions in Gaza have forced the United States, Israel’s closest ally and chief backer, to compensate with costly and potentially risky measures. The U.S. military has conducted more than 30 airdrops of humanitarian aid into the territory, and is building a floating pier and causeway off Gaza’s coast to deliver aid by sea.

The friction reached its peak after an April 1 airstrike by Israel’s military killed seven people working for World Central Kitchen, prompting Biden to issue his ultimatum that for the first time threatened to change U.S. policy and potentially condition or suspend military aid.

But while the number of aid trucks crossing into Gaza has increased substantially since then, the volume has not yet returned to prewar levels and aid officials say a host of issues further jeopardize already critical conditions there.

A chief complaint is that the inspection and transport system remains onerous, requiring aid to be offloaded and reloaded multiple times as it is moved across the border and to civilians inside Gaza. Aid agencies have said, too, that Israeli authorities reject materials in aid shipments due to concerns that items may be used for military purposes.

UNRWA says that in addition to trucks and drivers, it also requires about three times the amount of fuel that it is receiving to operate its distribution network.

The situation is most dire in northern Gaza. According to Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program, increasing aid shipments had allowed the program to double what it had been able to deliver to northern Gaza in April. The agency has reopened four bakeries in Gaza City.

“The immediate effects of increasing aid flow into Gaza City can be seen, but a famine doesn’t happen overnight and cannot be reversed overnight,” she said. The situation remains most serious in places such as Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and other areas of Gaza’s far north.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of UNRWA, told reporters on Tuesday that while the agency was permitted to work normally in some areas, convoys going south to north were “systematically denied.”

While more aid is getting into Gaza, conditions are growing harder in other ways, as hot weather makes it more difficult for displaced families living in tents.

Scott Paul, associate director for peace and security with Oxfam America, said Oxfam and other aid agencies have had supplies turned away by Israeli authorities, which he said was “overwhelmingly responsible” for the distribution issues in Gaza.

“The U.N. is responsible for coordinating the delivery of aid within Gaza, but it cannot do so in this environment of orchestrated chaos, insecurity and deprivation,” he said.

Blinken on Tuesday sought to sidestep questions about tensions between Israel and the United Nations, but he said he would raise with Israeli officials their system for prohibiting certain materials from being transported into Gaza.

“It’s also critically important that there be a clear affirmative list of files and items of products that are required for the well-being of people in Gaza, that there’s a clear list, that it’s well understood and that we don’t have arbitrary denials of products that need to get into Gaza,” he said.

Blinken visits Israel as officials suggest that Hamas and Israel could be closing in on a deal that would see some of the estimated 130 remaining hostages freed in return for a pause in fighting and a release of Palestinian prisoners.

But weeks of up-and-down hopes about striking a deal and averting a Rafah offensive appeared to have been dealt a blow Tuesday, when Netanyahu vowed that the military will go ahead one way or another. Israeli officials said the city is holding four of the six remaining Hamas battalions.

“We will enter Rafah and obliterate all the Hamas battalions there - with or without a deal, to achieve total victory,” Netanyahu said as he met with groups that represent hostage families and victims of the war who support an invasion.

“The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,” he said.

The hostage deal presents a political dilemma for Netanyahu. The Israeli leader is under pressure from far-right members of his coalition not to give any concessions to Hamas. His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has said the government has “no right of existence” unless the operation goes ahead and called for “total obliteration” in the southern city of Rafah at a holiday dinner Monday evening.

“It’s absurd that we are conducting negations with those who should no longer exist,” he said.

Hamas has been under pressure to accept a deal, which Blinken has described as “extraordinarily generous.” A Hamas delegation left Cairo and will return with a written response to the latest proposal, Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera News satellite channel reported.