Israel fails to meet US criteria to improve humanitarian situation in Gaza, aid groups say

By Jennifer Hansler, CNN

Washington (CNN) — The Israeli government has failed to meet criteria set out by the US to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, a group of eight humanitarian aid organizations said in a joint “scorecard” Tuesday.

“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,” the organizations said.

The release of the scorecard comes on the 30-day deadline for action set by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a letter to the Israeli government last month. In that letter, the US officials said Israel must act on more than a dozen concrete measures to improve the “deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

“Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for US policy” under a Biden administration national security memorandum as well as US law, they warned. Section 620i of the US Foreign Assistance Act requires the US to halt security assistance to governments who restrict US humanitarian aid.

For weeks, aid organizations and UN agencies have sounded the alarm about the “apocalyptic” conditions in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been carrying out intensive military operations. On Friday, a group of independent experts warned that “there is a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip.” The scorecard itself notes that “an estimated 100,000 people have been displaced from North Gaza to Gaza City and between 75,000 and 95,000 people remain besieged in North Gaza without medical or food supplies.”

There is broad agreement in the administration that Israel must do more on the humanitarian assistance front, sources said Tuesday, but officials expect no formal policy change announcements on the deadline.

In a meeting on Monday evening, Blinken and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer reviewed the steps that the Israeli government has taken. An Israeli official told CNN that the government has been working to provide humanitarian aid throughout the past year.

“Israel has responded positively to most American requests, many of which were already underway regardless,” the official said. “The State of Israel is taking significant steps to enable and sustain aid to Gaza’s civilians.”

‘Worst point since the war began’

However, according to the aid organizations, “the humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated to its worst point since the war began in October 2023.”

There was “non-compliance, significant delays, or backtracking” on 15 of the measures outlined in the Blinken and Austin letter, according to the aid organization scorecard. There was only “partial or inconsistent implementation” on four of them. None of the measures saw “full or significant progress.”

The scorecard was compiled by Anera, CARE International, MedGlobal, Mercy Corps, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International, and Save the Children. It is “based on the observations and experience of humanitarian organizations on the ground and on available public data and secondary sources.”

The measures that were completely unmet, according to the scorecard, included allowing a minimum of 350 trucks of humanitarian aid per day to enter Gaza and reinstating a minimum of 50-100 commercial trucks per day.

“It’s the sort of lethal combo of no humanitarian assistance and no commercial assistance getting in that is, for the past 30 days, accelerating the deterioration, and that’s a real problem,” said Kate Phillips-Barrasso, the vice president of global policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps.

“If you’re not having movement on one of those two, then it means that people are not going to have anything to eat. It’s just a very basic equation, right? Nothing to buy, nothing being given, and there’s obviously nothing being really grown or fished or anything locally, and not to mention it wouldn’t ever sustain a population of 2 million,” she told CNN.

They are now receiving reports that “people are not just skipping meals anymore; they’re having a meal once every couple of days, and it’s mostly canned stuff,” she said.

“There’s no fresh food,” Phillips-Barrasso said.

The Israeli government also failed to institute “adequate humanitarian pauses” to allow for humanitarian activities, to rescind “evacuation orders when there is no operational need,” to ensure continuous humanitarian access to northern Gaza, or enhance security for humanitarian sites and movements, according to the scorecard.

According to Israeli authorities and local Palestinian journalists, some humanitarian aid has been delivered to northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun area in recent days – but many displaced Palestinians there were forced out of their shelters by airstrikes and warnings from the Israeli military to head south before they could receive the aid.

“Israeli forces repeatedly attacked humanitarian sites and frontline responders during the 30-day period,” the scorecard said. “At least 14 aid workers have been killed since October 3, including at least four documented during the 30-day period.”

Moreover, despite US warnings in the letter and elsewhere, the Israeli parliament voted to ban UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The State Department spokesperson warned last month that the role UNRWA plays in Gaza “cannot be filled by anyone else.”

Calls to halt arms sales

On Tuesday, a group of US officials who resigned in protest at the Biden administration’s policy towards Israel and the war in Gaza called on the US government to halt weapons sales to Israel for violating laws on humanitarian aid.

“We are calling on President Biden to keep this 30-day promise. To uphold US law. To halt US weapons sales to Israel, to stop the spread of the conflict and look out for America,” members of the group said in a video.

“There is no provision in US or international law that allows extra time to starve people,” said former top State Department official Stacy Gilbert.

At a press briefing last week, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US has made clear to the Israeli government that “there are potential legal and policy considerations from failure to improve the humanitarian assistance situation in Gaza and implement a number of the steps that we outlined in the letter.”

“We are in active discussion with them – including in the past several days – about steps that they have taken and what more that they need to do. And we’ll make an assessment when we get to the end of the period,” he said Thursday.

The humanitarian scorecard noted that “the effectiveness of international diplomatic efforts to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza hinges on the willingness of the United States and other countries to push Israel to comply with these priorities.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Mick Krever, MJ Lee, Kylie Atwood, Abeer Salman, Kareem Khadder and Irene Nasser contributed to this report.

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