Why is only limited aid getting to Palestinians inside Gaza?
JERUSALEM — The United States said Tuesday it wouldn’t punish Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But it urged Israel to increase the flow of aid into the besieged territory.
“We are not giving Israel a pass,” said Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman. “We want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve.” Israel, which controls all crossings into Gaza, says it is committed to delivering humanitarian assistance and has scrambled to ramp up aid. It says the U.N. and international aid groups need to do a better job of distributing supplies.Aid into Gaza is typically measured in terms of truckloads of food and supplies entering the territory. The U.S. has demanded 350 trucks daily.
Israel says it closed all the Gaza crossings for the Jewish high holidays in October and couldn’t send aid to the north because of the offensive against Hamas fighters. UNRWA has been the main agency procuring and distributing aid in Gaza, and a feud between Israel and the agency, led Israel to take steps toward banning it last month. Israel says Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA -- a charge the agency denies.
But the military and aid agencies both acknowledge that aid deliveries are treacherous, because family-based crime groups are robbing the trucks. An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under military briefing guidelines, estimated that 30% to 40% of aid supplies are stolen by members of criminal families.
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