US says it will not limit arms transfers to Israel after some aid improvements to Gaza

The Biden administration said on Tuesday that Israel made good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and that it therefore would not limit arms transfers to Israel as it threatened to do a month ago. 

However, relief groups say conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month-old war. 

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on Tuesday the progress to date must be supplemented and sustained but that “we at this time have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law.”  

This law requires recipients of military assistance to adhere to international humanitarian law and not impede the provision of such aid. 

“We are not giving Israel a pass,” Patel said, adding that “we want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve, and we think some of these steps will allow the conditions for that to continue progress.” 

The decision from the U.S. — Israel’s key ally and largest provider of arms and other military aid — comes despite international aid organizations declaring that Israel has failed to meet U.S. demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip. Hunger experts have warned that the north may already be experiencing famine. 

The Biden administration last month set a deadline expiring Tuesday for Israel to “surge” more food and other emergency aid into the Palestinian territory or risk the possibility of scaled-back military support as Israel wages offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

 The obstacles facing aid distribution were on this display this week. Even after the Israeli military gave permission for a delivery to the northernmost part of Gaza — virtually cut off from food for more than a month by an Israeli siege — the United Nations said it couldn't deliver most of it because of turmoil and restrictions from Israeli troops on the ground.  

In the south, hundreds of truckloads of aid are sitting on the Gaza side of the border because the U.N. says it cannot reach them to distribute the aid — again because of the threat of lawlessness, theft and Israeli military restrictions. 

Israel has announced a series of steps — though their effect was unclear. On Tuesday, it opened a new crossing in central Gaza, outside the city of Deir al-Balah, for aid to enter.  

It also announced a small expansion of its coastal “humanitarian zone,” where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in tent camps. It connected electricity for a desalination plant in Deir al-Balah. 

Eight international aid organizations, meanwhile, said in a report Tuesday that “Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. criteria” but also took actions “that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in Northern Gaza. … That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago.”