By Edward Wong and Farnaz Fassihi

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Tuesday (12) that it did not plan to decrease weapons aid to Israel, as a 30-day deadline set by the Biden administration passed without the country substantially improving the humanitarian situation in the war-devastated Gaza Strip.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin had warned in a letter dated Oct. 13 that the United States would reassess its military aid to Israel if it failed to increase the amount of aid allowed to enter Gaza within 30 days.

The letter said that the humanitarian situation for the 2 million residents of Gaza was “increasingly dire” and that the amount of aid entering Gaza had fallen by 50% since April.

By law, the US government cannot give aid to foreign military forces deemed by the State Department to be committing “gross violations of human rights”.

UN officials have said Israel’s continued blocking of humanitarian aid and targeting of humanitarian workers constitute violations of international law and could amount to war crimes.

Food insecurity experts working on an initiative controlled by UN bodies and major relief agencies said last week that famine was imminent or most likely occurring in northern Gaza. UN officials say the entire population of Gaza is facing food insecurity.

Israeli officials have denied creating obstacles to aid deliveries and say raids on aid trucks by Palestinians and other problems have prevented proper distribution.

On Tuesday, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesperson, initially gave vague answers when reporters asked whether the United States was letting the 30-day deadline pass without taking any action, despite the crucial needs in Gaza.

When pressed, Patel said he did not have any changes to US policy to announce. He said Israeli officials had taken some steps that met the criteria laid out in the letter last month but acknowledged they needed to do more.

“It is a very dire circumstance,” he said. “And what we need to see is we need to see these steps acted on. We need to see them implemented.”

Patel pointed to Israel’s reopening of the Erez crossing into northern Gaza and the opening of a new crossing as examples of the steps Israel had taken to comply with some of the 15 demands in the letter.

But aid workers say other conditions have not been met, including the first one: ensuring that 350 trucks carrying food and other supplies enter Gaza each day. Aid workers say about 40 to 50 trucks have entered southern Gaza each day and few have entered northern Gaza.

Blinken and Austin sent the letter to Israel more than three weeks before the US elections on Nov. 5. For months, many Arab and Muslim Americans and progressive voters had said they would not vote for the Democrats if the Biden administration continued to give weapons aid to Israel in the war.

President-elect Donald Trump ran ads during the campaign that said he would end the war but gave no details of how he would do so. In his first term, he enacted many pro-Israel policies that infuriated Palestinians.

The war began after Hamas-led groups killed about 1,200 people in Israel in October 2023. Since then, the Israeli military’s bombardment and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 43,000 people, according to local authorities, a figure that encompasses mostly civilians, including many women and children, and some Hamas fighters.

On Tuesday afternoon, the United Nations Security Council met to address the famine alert issued last week for Gaza. Senior UN officials told the council that aid entering Gaza was at its lowest since the conflict began.

Ilze Brands Kehris, the UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, said there was “constant and continued interference with the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, which has fallen to some of the lowest levels in a year.”

Brands Kehris called on all states providing weapons to parties in the conflict — which would include the United States — to reassess those arrangements “with a view to ending such support if this risks serious violations of international law.”

She said her agency had found that close to 70% of all people killed in Gaza by strikes, shelling and other hostilities were children and women. She added that children ages 5 to 9 were the largest group in the casualty count.

On Tuesday eight aid agencies, which included OXFAM, Save the Children and Refugees International, issued a joint statement saying Israel had failed to comply with both the US demands and obligations under international law to facilitate adequate aid to 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 statement said.

Joyce Msuya, the UN’s acting humanitarian chief, said that in October, daily food distribution shrank by nearly 25% compared with September. “We are witnessing acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes,” she said, adding that “conditions of life across Gaza are unfit for human survival.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said that without an immediate surge in humanitarian aid, many residents of Gaza “may not survive the winter”.

-New York Times