The main UN aid agency in Gaza says Israel has failed to meet a US deadline to boost aid to the territory or risk a reduction in American military aid.
Last month, in a strongly worded letter, the US secretary of state gave Israel an ultimatum of 30 days to ensure more aid trucks reached Gaza daily. The deadline expires on Tuesday.
The amount of aid getting into Gaza is at its lowest level in a year according to the United Nations.
A UN-backed report recently warned that there was an imminent likelihood of famine in northern Gaza, where hardly any aid has entered in the past month.
Israel says it has substantially increased the amount of aid getting into Gaza, and accuses aid agencies of failing to adequately distribute it.
In his letter on 13 October, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel needed to allow a minimum of 350 lorries a day into Gaza, every day, by 12 November.
But when asked if Israel had done enough since then to meet America’s demands, Louise Wateridge, Senior Emergency Coordinator there for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), bluntly said “No”.
In footage filmed for the BBC by a local journalist in Gaza at one of the few remaining bakeries in the centre of the strip, a stream of hot puffed-up pitas roll out of an oven on a conveyor belt.
Through a small square window, hands desperately grasp at the bags of bread as money is handed over.
Like all food, the price of bread has increased dramatically over the past year.
Outside the bakery, hundreds of packed people scramble to get their hands on the bread.
Among them is grandmother, Aida al-Horan, who has also been picking up soup.
Israel says it has substantially increased the amount of aid getting into Gaza, including through the reopened Erez West crossing
But over the past month, Israel has met America’s request to open up more crossings into Gaza.
Cogat – the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian affairs in the Gaza Strip – announced on Tuesday morning that it had opened a new crossing, Kissufim, towards the south.
A spokesman for Cogat told said that “most aspects [of Blinken’s demands] have been met and those which have not are being discussed, [and] some US demands are for issues that were being resolved already”.
