The Israeli government this week approved a series of measures that will vastly expand the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip ahead of a deadline set by the Biden administration to implement 15 policy changes or risk a possible arms embargo, according to media reports on Tuesday.
Among the list of steps approved by the Security Cabinet on Sunday was an unspecified increase in the amount of aid entering the Palestinian coastal enclave.
Ministers also agreed to provide the Biden administration with a written pledge that Israel is not seeking to deport Palestinians from combat zones in Gaza, Channel 13 News reported. Another step approved by the Cabinet is the inland widening of the Al-Muwasi humanitarian zone on Gaza’s coast.
On Tuesday, the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories announced that, “in accordance with the directive of the political echelon,” it reopened the Kissufim Crossing to transfer additional humanitarian aid from Israel to the southern Strip.
The border crossing, which served as the main route for traffic to Israeli communities in Gaza before Jerusalem’s withdrawal from the Strip, was closed as part of the disengagement from the territory on Aug. 15, 2005.
Meanwhile, Channel 13 reported the Cabinet voted not to yield to the U.S. demand for representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to be allowed to visit Hamas terrorists in Israeli jails. Hamas has refused to allow the Red Cross to see the 101 hostages it still holds captive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly warned fellow ministers that while President-elect Donald Trump was unlikely to slap an arms embargo on Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden could still take steps against the Jewish state in his last two-plus months in office.
In an Oct. 13 missive addressed to then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urged Jerusalem to implement more than a dozen policy changes within 30 days or risk “implications” for U.S. policy, including an arms embargo.
Among other measures, the Biden administration called on the Jewish state to allow at least 350 aid trucks to pass daily through existing border crossings with Gaza and to immediately open a fifth crossing.
An Israeli official told Ynet that Jerusalem was unable to meet the demand for that number of trucks.
Israel was also instructed to announce “adequate humanitarian pauses across Gaza” for at least four months, rescind evacuation orders, remove a ban on the entry of “container and closed trucks,” authorize certain items with dual military use to enter and declare that there will be no “policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza.”
Citing reports of alleged abuses against Palestinian terrorists captured during Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and the Gaza war, the letter urged Israel to immediately allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit all “individuals detained in connection with this conflict.”
The Biden administration confirmed the contents of a letter, with John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, telling reporters that Washington’s criticism was prompted by a “recent decrease in humanitarian assistance reaching the people of Gaza.”
The Israel Defense Forces has been fighting to defeat Hamas in Gaza since the terror group led a mass invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering 1,200 people, mainly Jewish civilians, while wounding thousands more and kidnapping 251 people to Gaza, where 101 remain.
Jerusalem has rejected any accusation that the IDF does not comply with international law or is interfering with aid efforts, and has accused Hamas of stealing most of the aid. At times, the White House and State Department have admitted that the terror group is known to seize aid.
