Israel is allowing less and less aid into Gaza
Polygraph | Newsletter n°272 | 22 Oct 2024
Situation
The Biden-Harris administration recently made Israel an offer: let more humanitarian aid into Gaza and receive more US weapons. According to the leaked letter from US to Israeli officials, the White House gave Israel 30 days to implement a list of demands purportedly to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The letter itself is an admission that Israel is blocking US humanitarian aid which, under Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, triggers an immediate suspension of US military aid. But rather than follow US law, the Biden-Harris administration decided that it wouldn’t for another 30 days (at least).
The demands
The Biden-Harris administration’s first demand of Israel is “enabling a minimum of 350 [aid] trucks per day to enter Gaza.” There are about 15 other listed demands, but that first one will likely become the main yardstick government officials and media outlets will reference when discussing the extent to which Israel obstructs or facilitates humanitarian assistance. Why? For one, it already is. Second, it’s measurable — nearly all the other demands listed are qualitative, making evaluating Israeli compliance challenging.
Israel will not meet this 350-truck threshold: Israeli leaders don't want to and the Biden-Harris administration won’t make them. But because both parties want to continue weapons transfers, the Biden-Harris administration will say after the 30 days are up that Israel showed “improvement” in terms of allowing aid into Gaza (likely pointing to the increased number of aid trucks crossing into Gaza), thereby punting yet again on enforcing Section 620I.
Ultimately, the Biden-Harris administration invented this side quest to avoid following US law. Like the Gaza pier, it’s a PR stunt, merely there to provide humanitarian cover for the genocidal status quo.
Israel is allowing less and less aid into Gaza
Blocking food and humanitarian aid has been stated Israeli policy since 9 October 2023, but as of late, Israeli leaders have been particularly explicit about their intent to seal off Gaza from humanitarian aid. This intent is confirmed in practice, according to Israel’s own data. The number of aid trucks entering Gaza per day has fallen dramatically over the last six months. In May, an average of 202 trucks entered Gaza per day; this month’s daily average is 39 — an 81 percent reduction.1
That’s for all border crossings into Gaza. The effect is even more pronounced for the ones in the north: there’s been a 93 percent reduction in the average number of trucks entering through the northern crossings from May to October (from more than 35 to fewer than 3 trucks per day, respectively).
A very important caveat: The amount of humanitarian aid that crosses the Israel-Gaza border is much, much larger than the amount that actually gets delivered. Getting aid through Israeli border checkpoints is incredibly difficult, but it’s a cakewalk compared to getting the aid from the border to the people who need it. More on this later.
^Alt text for screen readers: Israel is allowing less and less humanitarian aid into Gaza. The purple line on this graph shows the average number of aid trucks entering Gaza per day for the months April through October 2024. The daily averages are as follows: 226, 202, 164, 191, 146, 141, 39. Data: IDF COGAT (data accessed 20 October 2024).
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-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)
As of October 20, the latest available data for this month goes from October 1 - 12.