US warns humanitarian aid is not reaching people who need it in northern Gaza

Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department warned on Monday that humanitarian aid was not reaching people who need it in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, which spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States was not accepting.

“One of our assessments is that food, water and medicine that should be delivered to the people in Jabaliya are not currently being received by them. And we want to see those changes,” Miller said.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Authority said about 100,000 people were left in Jabaliya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun without medicine or food. Reuters was unable to independently verify this figure.

The emergency service said its operations had been halted by the three-week Israeli attack in the north, in an area where the military said it destroyed Hamas fighting forces at the start of the year-long war.

Israeli forces launched a recent operation in the north with the stated goal of preventing Hamas from regrouping. The operation intensified after the assassination of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar more than a week ago.

Miller said Washington would clearly reject any attempts to create a siege, starve civilians or wall off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has proposed a so-called “master plan” for Israel, released by retired military commanders and proposed by some members of parliament this month, which would see Palestinian citizens ordered to evacuate northern Gaza, which would then be declared closed. military zone.

Israel told the US it was not following through with the plan, Miller said.

But he warned that Israel was not meeting all the conditions set out in a letter the US sent to Israel earlier this month, calling on it to take action within 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip or face potential restrictions on US military aid, according to in his words. US officials.

“They have not fully implemented all the changes we called for in this letter,” he said, adding that the US would wait until 30 days had passed before offering a final assessment.

On Monday, the Israeli parliament passed a law banning the UN aid agency UNRWA from operating inside the country. Miller said before the law’s passage that the United States had made it clear to Israel that it was deeply concerned about the law because UNRWA plays an indispensable role in delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Humeira Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Alistair Bell)