Israel fails to meet US aid demands to ease Gaza catastrophe, aid groups say

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GENEVA (Reuters) -International aid groups said that Israel had failed to meet a series of U.S. demands intended to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by a Tuesday deadline.

The United States told its ally Israel in a letter on Oct. 13 that it must take steps to improve the aid situation in war-ravaged Gaza within 30 days. If not, it could face potential restrictions on U.S. military aid.

“Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. 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,” a group of eight aid groups including Oxfam, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council said in 19-page report.

For more than a month, Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into north Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and creating fresh waves of displacement in an operation they say is designed to prevent Hamas fighters regrouping there.

On Friday, global food security experts released a rare warning of imminent famine in parts of northern Gaza unless immediate steps were taken to ease the situation.

Louise Wateridge, Senior Emergency Officer for UNRWA in Gaza, told a Geneva press briefing that aid trucks into the Strip had fallen in October and that no food was allowed to enter northern Gaza for an entire month.

“The people here need everything. They need more. It’s not enough,” she said.

Asked what she expected Washington to do about the deadline, she said: “Anything that happens now is already too late. Thousands and thousands of people have been killed senselessly. They have been killed because there is lack of aid, because the bombs have continued and because we have not been able to even reach them under the rubble.”

Israel said on Monday it had met most of the U.S. demands. Some things remain under discussion and they touch on safety issues, an Israeli official told reporters.

Other measures, including the opening of a new crossing into Gaza, have been implemented, it said. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that hundreds of food and water packages had been sent to parts of northern Gaza during a coordinated operation.

Washington has not yet commented on whether its conditions have been met. Last week, the State Department said Israel had taken some measures to increase aid access to Gaza but had so far failed to significantly turn around the humanitarian situation.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Editing by Alex Richardson and Angus MacSwan)