Urgent UN security council meeting called amid pressure on Israel to allow aid into Gaza
The UK, France and Algeria have called an urgent meeting of the UN security council amid mounting pressure on Israel to respond to a US warning that it would partially cut off military assistance unless humanitarian aid was allowed to flow unhindered into Gaza within 30 days.
In a volte face over the weekend, after months of refusing to use US weapons supplies as leverage on Israel, Washington sought commitments to open border crossings that have been kept shut since the beginning of the month. UN aid agencies warned that starving Palestinians were so desperate they are sifting through rubble for food and money.
The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “The humanitarian situation in northern Gaza is dire, with access to basic services worsening and the UN reporting that barely any food has entered in the last two weeks. Israel must ensure civilians are protected and ensure routes are open to allow life-saving aid through.”
The demand for action, which was couched as a legal requirement in order for Washington to comply with its own domestic laws, comes amid signs that the vacillating US position is being driven by concerns over Kamala Harris losing key support in the US presidential election. Yet the 30-day deadline by which Israel must comply comes after the 5 November vote.
Past pressure from the US over the supply of aid into Gaza has normally led to Israel lifting the blockages, but it has subsequently reverted to well documented stricter bureaucratic controls on aid once diplomatic pressures eased.
A senior Israeli general staff officer reacted to the US pressure cautiously on Tuesday, saying: “We take orders only from the chief of staff and pass them on to the divisional commanders. There is no starvation of the population here in order to evacuate them. No way.”
In the past two days, he added, the IDF has taken unusual measures in order to bring convoys of trucks to Jabalya, despite the fighting. “Not much has changed in the routine of humanitarian aid,” he said. “The decisions and the plans are made only on the basis of operational planning.”
The US is demanding the entry of at least 350 aid trucks into Gaza each day through all four major crossings controlled by the IDF. It also requires adequate pauses in fighting to allow aid to flow, and written undertakings that Israel is not seeking to starve and drive Palestinians from northern Gaza. The letter sent to the minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, and the strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, and signed by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and its secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, insisted there had been a recent reduction in the amount of aid entering the strip.
COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, posted on social media on Wednesday that 50 trucks carrying humanitarian aid – including food, water, medical supplies and shelter equipment provided by Jordan – were transferred to northern Gaza through the Allenby Bridge crossing and the Erez West crossing. It added that 145 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza via the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings.
In March, Israel gave the US a written commitment on aid in response to a National Security Memorandum (NSM) issued by Joe Biden. The memo applies to all recipients of US security assistance.
But the letter sent by Blinken and Austin said aid deliveries had dropped by more than 50% since March.
They said the amount of aid that entered Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year, figures that were confirmed at a UN security council meeting last Thursday.
The letter also signalled an unusual defence of the UN’s Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, saying that restrictions on the organisation being proposed by the Israeli government “would devastate the Gaza humanitarian response at this critical moment and deny vital educational and social services to tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which could have implications under relevant US law and policy.”
As part of a law passed earlier this year, the US is barred from funding Unrwa until March 2025, though the White House said last month that it backed the restoration of that aid “with appropriate safeguards”.
The US letter makes no reference to the claim that Israel is in breach of successive international Court of Justice orders requiring a step change in the flow of aid.
The demarche signals how the US is offering contrasting levels of support in the three theatres of war that Israel is operating, and in the process risks sending mixed messages that may reflect divisions within the US administration.
In Lebanon, the US backed calls in September for a 21-day ceasefire, but then in the wake of the killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah appeared to greenlight Israel’s air and ground offensive. But on Tuesday, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington had “made clear that we are opposed to the campaign the way we’ve seen it conducted over the past weeks”.
The US is also backing European allies angered by the insistence of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the international peacekeeping force Unifil leave its posts in southern Lebanon to avoid getting caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah. The Italian prime minister, Georgia Meloni, will visit Italian troop commanders in Lebanon on Friday to confirm that Italy opposes the withdrawal of Unifil forces in the face of Israeli threats.
In the face of an expected Israeli attack on Iran, seen as a reprisal for Tehran’s strikes on Israel at the start of this month, the US is sending an air defence system to supplement Israel’s ability to protect itself from a ballistic missile attack. The supply of the Thad missile system is part of a bargain designed to ensure Israel holds back from hitting Iranian economic and nuclear targets, an induced self-restraint that might persuade Iran in turn not to mount further retaliation, which could bring the whole region closer to all-out war.