The State Department on Tuesday said that Israel is not in violation of U.S. law related to the delivery and access of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip, despite pushback from aid groups and the United Nations.
The U.N. and the aid groups have sounded the alarm over dire conditions for Palestinians’ access to food, medical care and shelter.
The U.S. assessment came at the end of a 30-day timeline where Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a warning to the Israeli government that concrete steps needed to be taken to increase humanitarian assistance deliveries into the Strip or risk triggering a block on U.S. weapons deliveries under federal law.
“We, at this time, have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Tuesday.
“Israel has taken a number of steps to address the measures laid out in the letter that secretaries Blinken and Austin sent earlier in October. We continue to be in discussion with our partners in Israel about these steps that they’ve taken, which they took as a result of U.S. intervention, as well as additional steps that we feel that still need to be taken.”
The U.S. assessment came after eight international aid organizations said Israel had failed to meet the criteria laid out by Blinken and Austin. They said Isarael had taken actions “that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground particularly in Northern Gaza,” the Associated Press reported.
