Israel announced on Friday that it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries into famine-threatened northern Gaza, hours after the United States warned of a sharp shift in its policy over Israel’s war against Hamas militants.
In a tense, 30-minute phone call on Thursday, US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that United States policy on Israel was dependent on the protection of civilians and aid workers in Gaza, the first hint of possible conditions to Washington’s military support.
Just hours later, in the middle of the night in Jerusalem, Israel announced it would open more aid routes into the coastal Palestinian territory which Israel placed under siege at the start of the war nearly six months ago.
“Israel will allow the temporary delivery of humanitarian aid” through the Ashdod Port and the Erez land crossing, as well as increased deliveries from neighbouring Jordan at the Kerem Shalom crossing, Netanyahu’s office said.
The White House quickly welcomed the moves saying they came “at the president’s request” and said they “must now be fully and rapidly implemented”.
Israel has come under mounting international pressure over the toll inflicted by its six-month war on Hamas, and drawn increasingly tough rebuke from its main backer Washington.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Palestinian militants also took around 250 hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 whom the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 33,037 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, while the United Nations has warned of “catastrophic” hunger.
