A promised surge in aid into Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu promised Joe Biden a week ago has so far failed to materialise, aid workers say, as the US aid chief confirmed that famine is beginning to take hold in parts of the besieged coastal strip.

One of Netanyahu’s pledges to Biden, to open the Ashdod port north of Gaza as a portal to sea-borne humanitarian aid, has led to no apparent action, according to the Israel N12 channel. N12 reported that none of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat) nor the Ashdod Port authorities have so far received instructions about opening the facility to shipments bound for Gaza.

Israeli officials had been promising their US counterparts for weeks that a crossing point would be opened into northern Gaza where the starvation is the most severe. It would either be at Erez, which was the main border point before the current war, or at a new site, they informed Washington. No decision was made, however, until Wednesday, six days after the Biden-Netanyahu call, when the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said construction had begun on a new crossing. It is not clear how long that construction work will take.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 months ago

    All it would take is US military escorts for aid.

    If Israel wants to attack America to stop aid, let them do it and start a war against America.

    Anything else and they’ll just keep bombing aid sites.

    • sudo@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      There’s Israeli civilians blockading the border crossing with “No Aid To Terrorists” signs. The military escorts would have to disperse them first. As much as I love to see those genocidal freaks get cleared out, it would definitely be spun into a PR nightmare.