President Joe Biden’s administration this weekend pressured Israel to allow more aid into Gaza and to restore internet connectivity to the enclave, a concerted effort to ease a growing humanitarian crisis that comes amid fears of a widening regional war.
In Biden’s first phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since an expanded Israeli ground operation in Gaza began, the president “underscored the need to immediately and significantly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza,” according to a White House summary of the call.
Later, a top Israeli official told CNN as many as 100 trucks a day could soon be moving into the strip. The increased flow comes as a dire humanitarian crisis grows worse following the intensification of Israel’s assault. Aid agencies say food, water and medicine are in short supply.
The private pressure from the United States to address the humanitarian concerns comes amid fears of a growing regional conflict, with top US officials warning of an “elevated risk” of a spillover war. As Israel’s assault on Gaza unfolds, global pressure is mounting for a pause in the fighting, including Monday at the United Nations.
American officials are carefully monitoring for signs of eroding support for Israel, both in the United States and around the world, mindful of how that might affect calculations inside Iran and other regional actors.
The administration has also faced increasing calls to show more empathy with Palestinians and some members of the progressive wing of Biden’s party are ramping up their pressure on him to support a ceasefire in order to spare Gaza from further destruction.
So far, White House officials have explicitly ruled out supporting a ceasefire, and have offered no criticism – either overt or implied – of Israel’s military actions. Instead, they describe occasionally difficult behind-the-scenes conversations about the importance of humanitarian aid and protecting civilian lives.
“We have conversations, like friends do, on the hard questions … on issues associated with humanitarian aid,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday on CBS.
Sullivan plans to meet Monday with Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, the brother of the kingdom’s powerful crown prince, who is visiting Washington for talks. Saudi Arabia has cautioned against a broad-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza, in part due to the potential of a spiraling regional war.
US officials expect that, in the coming days, up to 100 aid trucks will begin to enter into Gaza per day, after Israel agreed to speed up inspections of the convoys carrying vital humanitarian support, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog said Sunday the flow of aid would soon increase.
“We’re in the process of ramping up humanitarian supplies into Gaza. I think in the next day or two you’ll see up to 100 trucks a day with humanitarian supplies going into Gaza,” Herzog told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Herzog said Israel was working “in very close coordination” with United Nations agencies and the US government to provide “additional humanitarian solutions to the problems on the ground.”
“We know where the problems are and we work hard to address them. We think this is our duty and also our interest,” Herzog said.
On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN’s Poppy Harlow that short, localized humanitarian pauses in the fighting should “be seriously considered.”
Pressed by Harlow on efforts to get Americans out of Gaza, Kirby was unable to provide a timeline.
“We believe that there will be a way to get those Americans out. We’d like to do that today if we could. I don’t know – I don’t know how close we are. We believe there’s a way to do this. We just have to work at it,” he said on “CNN This Morning”
CNN reported Sunday that communications in Gaza were partially restored following pressure by the US.
The blackout – which left civilians, aid groups and journalists without any means of communicating with the outside world – came amid heavy Israeli bombardment of the enclave. Service appeared to be gradually restored on Sunday.
A senior US official said the US made clear to Israel the importance of restoring service in Gaza.
“That was something that we cared about, worked on, and we are glad to see that restoration,” Sullivan said on MSNBC.
The White House has faced increased pressure recently from its own party for the president to speak more forcefully about humanitarian conditions in Gaza, including during a meeting last week with Muslim-American leaders who told Biden he needed to show more empathy for Palestinians.
Those critiques grew louder last week after Biden cast doubt on civilian death figures in Gaza provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry there. Since the conflict began earlier this month, Biden and his administration have faced harsh criticism from Muslim-Americans for how they have handled the crisis in the Middle East, including accusations of demonstrating less empathy for Palestinians than for Israelis.
Some groups, many of whom led door-to-door voting campaigns for Biden in 2020, have warned the approach could become a political liability for the president as he seeks reelection.
“We have since almost the very beginning hours of this conflict talked about the need to respect civilian life talk about abiding by the laws of war, cautioned and urged our Israeli counterparts to be careful how they conduct these operations so that they minimize civilian casualties,” Kirby said on Monday, pushing back against that criticism.
He added, “I am not discounting the fact that civilians have been killed and injured and I absolutely not discounting the fact that there is a humanitarian need. We’re working on this very, very hard to try to get that aid and assistance in there. But Israel is not deliberately trying to kill civilians. They are going after Hamas. We want to make sure they do it in a cautious, careful, deliberate way. But it is not a war aim of Israel to kill innocent civilians the way it is a war aim of Vladimir Putin to do that to Ukraine.”
