US to Judge Israel’s Progress on Boosting Gaza Aid This Week

Washington (Quds News Network)- The United States will decide this week whether Israel has made progress toward improving the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and how Washington will respond, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday as Israel began to make its case.

President Joe Biden’s administration told Israel in an Oct. 13 letter signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that it must take steps within 30 days on a series of measures or risk restrictions on American military aid.

These include increasing the level of aid getting into Gaza to at least 350 trucks a day, instituting additional humanitarian passes and providing increased security for humanitarian sites.
“This week we will make our judgments about what kind of progress they have made,” Sullivan told the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

“And then Secretary Austin, Secretary Blinken, the president will make judgments about what we do in response, and I’m not going to get ahead of that.”

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

“Through expanded routes, medical assistance, infrastructure improvements and coordination with international partners, COGAT continues to facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts that are meant to help the civilian population in the Gaza Strip,” the agency claimed.

The U.S. deadline is set to expire just days after global food security experts said there is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of northern Gaza which has been under relentless Israeli assaults and military siege since October 5.

“Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert on Friday.

The FRC said that it could be “assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing” in north Gaza.

“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” it said.

Last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned that the entire Gaza Strip was at risk of famine, while top U.N. officials last week described the northern Gaza Strip as “apocalyptic” and everyone there was “at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”

The United States has said it is watching to ensure that Israel’s actions on the ground show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government does not have a “policy of starvation” in the north.

On Saturday, the head of the U.N. Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon.

“This deprives people in Gaza of the basics including food to survive,” Lazzarini wrote in a social media post.

“What is being allowed into Gaza is not enough, an average of just over 30 trucks (a) day. This is just over six percent of the daily needs.”