U.S. challenges Israeli ban on fuel supplies as Gaza siege intensifies

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With humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip still hobbled by Israeli restrictions, the United States is challenging an Israeli ban on fuel supplies to the besieged Palestinian territory.

In three days of tightly limited aid convoys, which began after lengthy negotiations, a total of only 54 truckloads of emergency aid have entered Gaza from neighbouring Egypt – and none of the supplies have included fuel.

Israel has reserved the right to inspect each truck, slowing the aid flow. United Nations officials have estimated that Gaza is getting only 4 per cent of the supplies that it received before the Israel-Hamas war. Hundreds of trucks a day are needed, they say.

The war began on Oct. 7, after Hamas militants from Gaza attacked southern Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and abducting 222, according to the Israeli government’s latest count. Gaza’s health ministry says the subsequent Israeli missile bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 5,000 people and injured more than 15,000, with hundreds more still missing under the rubble of bombed buildings.

Israel has barred any aid supplies to Gaza that it suspects might benefit Hamas, and fuel has been the most contentious case so far. UN relief workers have warned that the ban on fuel will “strangle” the people of Gaza by halting water pumps and hospital operations within days.

The United States has now added its voice to the dissent over the fuel ban. “We know you need fuel to run power generators in hospitals,” John Kirby, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a briefing for foreign journalists in Washington on Monday.

“You need fuel to run the pumps in desalination facilities so that people can drink fresh, healthy water,” he said. “So fuel is another thing that we’re working on.”

The early convoys of aid are “not enough,” Mr. Kirby said. “We’re working very hard to keep that flow going. We know the needs are acute.”

The 54 trucks that have arrived in Gaza over the past three days are “a good start, but it is just a start,” he said. “We want to see it keep going.”

The UN has already reported that the average person in Gaza is getting only three litres of water a day for all purposes: drinking, cooking and hygiene. This compares with the global minimum standard of 50 to 100 litres a day. Because clean water is so difficult to find, many people are drinking dirty or polluted water.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States is working on a “sustained mechanism” to ensure aid arrives consistently in Gaza through the Rafah crossing from Egypt. The delivery of two or three aid convoys is insufficient, he told a briefing on Monday.

Relief agencies have been increasingly frustrated by the restrictions on aid. “At this stage, there is almost no access into Gaza for humanitarian organizations to provide aid, or for local partners in Gaza to access desperately needed supplies,” Stefan Epp-Koop, senior humanitarian manager at the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, said in a statement on Monday.

“The provision of humanitarian assistance is also tremendously challenging given the risks involved amid the current conflict,” he said.

Another agency, Save the Children, said in a statement that the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 2,000 children in the small, densely populated territory in the past 17 days. “Thousands of homes, and dozens of playgrounds, schools, hospitals, churches and mosques have been damaged or destroyed in Gaza,” the humanitarian group said.

“The damage to health infrastructure and the lack of medical supplies are forcing doctors to make impossible choices like performing surgery on hospital floors, often without anesthesia, and hampering their ability to treat patients with life-changing injuries,” it said.

The UN disclosed this week that 35 workers at its Palestinian refugee agency have been killed in Gaza since the war began. About half of the victims were teachers. “We are in shock and mourning,” the agency, known as UNRWA, said in a social-media post.

Only eight of the agency’s 22 health centres are still operational, according to the UN’s caan office. About 1.4 million people – more than half of Gaza’s population – have been forced from their homes, and at least 42 per cent of all housing units in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the Israeli bombardment, it said.

Nearly 600,000 displaced people are sheltering in UNRWA schools and other buildings, but 40 of these buildings have been damaged since the war began, the UN said.

“Living conditions in UNRWA schools used as shelters are dire,” the refugee agency said. “Up to 70 people share space in one classroom.”

About 20 displaced people were injured on the weekend when an Israeli air strike hit a building near a UNRWA school, the agency said. About 3,600 displaced people were sheltering at the school when the adjacent building was hit by the air strike.