US gives Israel 30 days to boost aid to Gaza; strike hits Beirut suburbs

Washington: The United States has warned Israel that it must increase the amount of humanitarian aid it is allowing into Gaza within the next 30 days or it could risk losing access to weapons funding.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin warned their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday that the changes must occur. The letter, which restates US policy towards humanitarian aid and arms transfers, was sent amid deteriorating conditions in northern Gaza and an Israeli airstrike on a hospital tent site in central Gaza that killed at least four people and burnt others.

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli strike on Monday in the courtyard of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.Credit: Bloomberg

A similar letter that Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to the Palestinian territory, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. But that has not lasted.

“In fact, it’s fallen by over 50 per cent from where it was at its peak,” Miller said at a briefing. “So the secretary, along with Secretary Austin, thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again, to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today.”

For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Israel must institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites, Austin and Blinken said in their letter. Israel had 30 days to respond to the requirements.

“The letter was not meant as a threat,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “The letter was simply meant to reiterate the sense of urgency we feel and the seriousness with which we feel it, about the need for an increase, a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance.”

An Israeli official confirmed a letter had been delivered but did not discuss the contents.

A copy of the letter was posted by an Axios reporter online.

“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government, including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding 90 per cent of humanitarian movements [and other restrictions have kept aid from flowing],” Blinken and Austin said.

A Palestinian woman and children in the courtyard of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, following an Israeli strike.Credit: Bloomberg

Funding for Israel has long carried weight in US politics, and with a presidential election just three weeks away, Biden has said that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have”.

Humanitarian aid groups fear that Israeli leaders may approve a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas, which could trap hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who are unwilling or unable to leave their homes, without food, water, medicine and fuel.

UN humanitarian officials said last week that aid entering Gaza was at its lowest level in months. About 80 trucks carrying aid have entered through crossings in the north since October 1, down from roughly 60 trucks a day previously, according to the UN website tracking deliveries.

COGAT, the Israeli body facilitating aid crossings into Gaza, denied that crossings to the north had been closed.

US officials said the letter was sent to remind Israel of both its obligations under international humanitarian law and of the Biden administration’s legal obligation to ensure that the delivery of American humanitarian assistance should not be hindered, diverted or held up by a recipient of US military aid.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive since the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas has killed more than 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The Hamas attacks that launched the war killed 1200 people, mostly civilians, and militants abducted another 250.

The US has spent a record of at least $US17.9 billion ($26.7 billion) on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project.

That aid has enabled Israel to purchase billions of dollars worth of munitions it has used in its operations against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. However, many of those strikes have killed civilians in both areas.

An Israeli strike hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Wednesday morning, witnesses told Reuters, hours after the US said it opposed the scope of Israeli attacks in the city amid a rising death toll and fears of wider escalation involving Iran.

Witnesses heard a blast and saw a plume of smoke. It came after an evacuation order by the Israeli military for a building in the area.

Israeli military evacuation orders were also affecting more than a quarter of Lebanon, according to the UN refugee agency, two weeks after Israel began incursions into the south of the country that it says are aimed at pushing back Hezbollah.

On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US had expressed its concerns to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration on the recent strikes.

“When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to,” he said, adopting a harsher tone than Washington has taken so far.

Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, had said on Tuesday his contacts with US officials had produced a “kind of guarantee” that Israel would tamp down strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs.

The last time Beirut was hit was on October 10.

Overnight, airstrikes killed at least 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.

Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.

Earlier, an Israeli airstrike destroyed three houses in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, and the local civil emergency service said they had recovered two bodies from the site, while the search continued for 12 other people who were believed to have been in the houses at the time.

Eight others were killed when a house was struck in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

The Gaza health ministry said a doctor was killed when he tried to help people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia. It added that several medics were wounded when their ambulance came under Israeli fire in the northern and southern Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration believes it has won assurances from Israel that it will not hit Iranian nuclear or oil sites as it looks to strike back following Iran’s 180-missile barrage earlier this month, two US officials said.

The government also believes that sending a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence battery (THAAD) to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it, a move announced this week, has eased some of Israel’s concerns about possible Iranian retaliation and general security issues.

However, the US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic discussions, cautioned that Israel’s assurances were not ironclad and that circumstances could change.

The officials also noted that Israel’s track record on fulfilling pledges in the past was mixed and had often reflected domestic Israeli politics that upended Washington’s expectations.

The most recent example of that was last month, when US officials were told by their Israeli counterparts that Netanyahu would welcome a US and French-led temporary ceasefire initiative in Lebanon only to see Israel launch a massive airstrike that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah two days later.

Netanyahu told French President Emmanuel Macron overnight that he would not agree to a ceasefire deal that failed to stop Hezbollah rearming and regrouping.

Macron has also called for an end to arms exports used in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

“The prime minister told President Macron that he opposes a unilateral ceasefire, which would not change the security situation in Lebanon and would return the country to its previous state,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

“He emphasised that Israel is operating against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation to prevent it from threatening Israel’s citizens on the northern border and to enable them to return to their homes safely.”

On Monday, France rejected demands made by Netanyahu for a UN peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, to pull back from its position in Lebanon, while France has summoned Israel’s ambassador over an incident where Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by US peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

The US has also said it opposes the bombing campaign in Beirut in past weeks and has communicated its concerns particularly over the civilian death toll, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

”There are specific strikes that it would be appropriate for Israel to carry out. But when it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut for the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with, and we were opposed to,” Miller said.

The civilian death toll was among Washington’s concerns, he said, without elaborating.

Miller’s comments represent a harsher tone than Washington has adopted so far toward Israel’s military operations in Lebanon.

AP, Reuters