Last Thursday, in the wake of Israeli strikes that killed seven aid workers, Joe Biden held a call with Benjamin Netanyahu and later told reporters he was “blunt and straightforward” with the Israeli prime minister. Biden said on Wednesday that he had advised Netanyahu “to do more” to provide increased and safe access to food and medicine in Gaza. “We’ll see what he does in terms of meeting the commitments he made to me,” Biden said.
The blunt chat does not seem to have made a great deal of difference so far. One week later, the United Nations says there hasn’t been a significant increase in the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza to provide desperately needed food and medical supplies. Satellite imagery from Tuesday shows that the crossing at Erez in northern Gaza remains closed despite Israel’s commitment last week to reopening it, which had made headlines.
There are discrepancies between the United Nations’ count of aid trucks crossing the border and the numbers provided by Israel. According to the U.N., 223 trucks entered Gaza on Monday, while Israel claims 419 trucks entered with aid. (Israeli officials said in a statement that the U.N. uses a “flawed counting method.”) The U.N. states that the current number of trucks going through is less than half the number required daily and that Israeli screening requirements cause most of these trucks to be only half full.
Six months into the war that began with Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Gazans are desperately in need of food. Over two dozen children have already starved to death, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. UNICEF reports that one in three children under the age of 2 is suffering from severe malnutrition. The situation is particularly dire in northern Gaza, where it has been more dangerous to send trucks. On Wednesday, Samantha Power, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, became the first American official to call the crisis in northern Gaza a famine.
As international-aid agencies work to provide more aid to Gaza, it remains dangerous for relief workers to truck in supplies. World Central Kitchen, whose seven workers were killed in the Israeli strikes last week, stated on Wednesday that another staffer was gravely injured at a separate strike at a mosque in central Gaza. The same day, a UNICEF convoy came under fire while waiting at a checkpoint inside northern Gaza. “It was shocking that this was happening to us on a coordinated mission in a designated holding area,” said UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram.
