Though Israel’s blocking of aid to Gaza continues to garner international reproach—so much so that even US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave Israel a 30-day deadline on Oct. 13 to improve humanitarian access to the area—Israel still claims it is not blocking aid from civilians; however, the past two months have seen the least amount of aid transferred into Gaza since the start of the war with Hamas, with northern Gaza seeing particularly low amounts of aid reaching civilians there, reported the Times of Israel.
ToI notes an Associated Press report that a review of UN and Israeli data found the average number of trucks entering Gaza daily remained well below the minimum of 350 a day that Austin and Blinken demanded in their letter. The mid-November deadline, AP suggested, may serve as a final test of President Joe Biden ‘s willingness to check a close ally that has shrugged off repeated U.S. appeals to protect Palestinian civilians during the war against Hamas. Aid groups say that a minimum of 500 trucks of relief supplies a day are required to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, but there has never been a month where Israel came close to meeting that figure since the conflict began. The peak, according to the Israeli government, came last April when a daily average of 225 trucks a day—less than half the minimum—entered the strip.
