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14-11-2024
WASHINGTON/ GAZA/ JERUSALEM: The UN’s Security Council is meeting to discuss humanitarian conditions in Gaza amid warnings of famine in the north and relentless Israeli attacks that killed at least 63 people in 24 hours.
The United States finds that Israel is not impeding aid to Gaza and says it will not halt any weapons funding, even as humanitarian groups say Israeli authorities have failed to meet Washington’s criteria.
Israeli forces continued to pound Lebanon, bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs and towns in Mount Lebanon, killing at least 28 people.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed at least 43,665 Palestinians and wounded 103,076 since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day and more than 200 were taken captive.
In Lebanon, at least 3,287 people have been killed and 14,222 wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began.
Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the State Department, told reporters that Washington has “not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law” as the deadline to boost aid to Gaza expired.
As we’ve been reporting, this mean the US will not be taking action against its ally.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had given Israel 30 days to abide by international humanitarian law in Gaza, including increasing aid deliveries to at least 350 trucks a day or risk no longer being supplied with weapons, as required under US law.
By almost every objective metric, aid agencies say that, in fact, the humanitarian situation has grown worse in that timeframe.
The UN is reporting that just 30 trucks are now entering Gaza daily, the lowest number in a year.
Just a week ago, the State Department noted that Israel had not done enough but now, citing the opening of two new crossings and the waiving of some customs restrictions in the last few days, the US announced that Israel had done enough to avoid sanctions even without carrying out most of the specific measures it had called for.
So once again, in this war on Gaza, the Biden administration issued an ultimatum to Israel based on domestic and international law, only for it not to follow through.
Though, perhaps for the last time before it leaves office.
Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that Israeli forces have launched three raids on the northern city in recent hours.
The attacks came as medical sources raised the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Tuesday to 64.
Deadly attacks in recent hours include on;
Tents in Deir el-Balah, where at least two people were killed
Beit Lahiya, where at least four people were killed
Nuseirat refugee camp, where at least five people were killed
Khan Younis, where at least one person was killed
Al-Karama in northern Gaza City, where the Wafa news agency reported several people killed and wounded.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UNSC that Israel is “restoring aid deliveries” to northern Gaza, but acknowledged that the situation in the region remains an “undisputed humanitarian crisis”.
She said the US “has made clear to Israel that it must address” the situation.
“An unconscionable number of Palestinian civilians, many women and children, have been killed,” she added. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
