World leaders and humanitarian groups said on Friday that Israel must show concrete results after it responded to mounting pressure from the United States by announcing it would open more aid routes to the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned famine is looming.
At a press conference in Brussels on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken welcomed the new aid channels, calling them “positive developments,” but said the United States was watching to see whether Israel would make facilitating humanitarian aid a priority. . crisis in Gaza. A measure of Israel’s commitment, he said, will be “the number of trucks actually coming in on a consistent basis.”
“The real test is the results, and that’s what we’re looking to see over the next few days and weeks,” he said, adding, “Really, the proof is in the results.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on Israel to “quickly” open new aid routes.
“No more excuses,” he wrote on social media.
Israel said early Friday that it had agreed to open the Erez crossing to allow aid to reach northern Gaza, where hunger is particularly acute. to use the Israeli port of Ashdod to direct more aid to the enclave; and to significantly increase deliveries from Jordan.
He made the announcement hours after President Biden suggested in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that further US support for Israel would be contingent on taking steps to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza and to alleviating the hunger crisis there.
While some Gazans said they heard recently that more aid was flowing through existing routes, it was still not enough to feed their families.
“We are clinging to life, and that’s all,” said Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant. He was staying with his family in a tent in Rafah, a city filled with hundreds of thousands of uprooted Gazans that Israel has promised to invade in its campaign to destroy Hamas. He said his family was able to buy some canned meat and vegetables and get rice and beans from a charity.
“Aid does not always reach those who have been displaced, except very little,” he said Friday in a WhatsApp message. “Mostly everything is sold in the market,” he added, echoing what many Gazans have been saying for months.
Friday was a holy day for Muslims observing Ramadan, a day that would normally bring heightened religious observance and preparations for the Eid al-Fitr festivities that mark the end of Ramadan. But Mr al-Masri said there was none of that in the tent camp where he lived.
“Most people are fasting because there is nothing to eat anyway,” he said. “We didn’t feel like this was Ramadan.”
Since the start of the war, Israel has restricted aid entering Gaza to two tightly controlled border crossings at Kerem Shalom and Rafah. Aid groups have said they face huge challenges trying to get supplies through these crossing points, including lengthy Israeli inspections and the risk of Israeli strikes on their workers in Gaza.
Global anger at Israel reached new heights this week after Israeli drone strikes killed six foreign nationals and a Palestinian working for the charity group World Central Kitchen and traveling in three vehicles in central Gaza.
After the attack, World Central Kitchen suspended its operations in Gaza and other aid groups and officials from the United States, Britain and other countries said Israel must do more to ensure the safety of aid workers.
The World Food Programme, an arm of the United Nations, said on Friday it would ask Israel to clarify security and logistical arrangements for the new routes “so we can move quickly to seize every new opportunity to feed more of its people.” Gaza. as hunger prevails.”
Israeli officials did not immediately say when the new routes would open or how much aid could pass through them. The Erez border crossing in northern Gaza in particular could present logistical obstacles, as most of the humanitarian aid has been stored in Egypt, on the opposite side of the coastal enclave.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, said the new measures were simply “not enough” and that “urgent efforts are needed to end hunger immediately”.
“Gaza children and babies are dying of malnutrition,” he wrote on social media.
At a United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday, Riyad H. Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, pointed out that Israel’s response to the deaths of the Global Central Kitchen workers was completely different from its response to the deaths of Palestinians.
He noted that Israel quickly investigated the attack on the aid group’s convoy and subsequently removed two officers and reprimanded three senior commanders for their roles in it.
“Who will account for all the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed?” he said, referring to the more than 32,000 Gazans who have been killed, according to the region’s health officials. “Aren’t our lives worth holding accountable to those who are murdering us and killing us in great numbers?”
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, expressed his condolences for the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers, but said the strikes on their convoy were a “tragic mistake made because of the cynical way Hamas operates to exploit political infrastructure and vehicles’.
“Israel never targets civilians intentionally – ever – let alone helping workers carrying out vital work,” he told the council.
The council’s debate in New York came as the top UN human rights committee in Geneva adopted a resolution on Friday calling on all countries to stop supplying arms to Israel, warning of possible violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses.
The committee, the Human Rights Council, adopted the resolution by a vote of 28 to 13, with 13 states abstaining. The United States and Germany, Israel’s biggest arms suppliers, voted against the measure, although the US ambassador to the council, Michèle Taylor, criticized Israel’s prosecution of the war.
“Israel has not done enough to mitigate civilian harm,” Ms Taylor said before the vote, calling for an immediate ceasefire and urging Mr Netanyahu to negotiate a deal with Hamas.
Israel’s representative on the committee, Meirav Eilon Shahar, condemned the passage of the resolution as a “very dark day in the history of the council.” Noting that the resolution did not denounce Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, he said the committee “turned a blind eye” to acts of violence against Israelis.
Later, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement noting that the council ignored the supply of weapons to Hamas by Iran and its allies.
Ultimately, many world leaders have said that a ceasefire would be the surest way to get more aid into Gaza and free the hostages still being held there. But talks aimed at reaching such a deal have stalled for weeks.
In an effort to help the parties reach an agreement, CIA Director William J. Burns was expected to travel to Cairo on Saturday to meet with his Israeli counterpart, David Barnea, and Qatari and Egyptian officials. which were brokered by Hamas, according to two people briefed on the plans.
The report was made by Nick Cumming-Bruce, Matina Stevis-Grindnev, Gaya Gupta, Jonathan Rice and Julian E. Barnes.
