The Times of Israel is liveblogging Thursday’s events as they happen.
Blinken tells Gallant that US will stand with Israel against Iranian threats
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a call with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, made clear that the United States will stand with Israel against any threats by Iran, the State Department says.
Blinken and Gallant also discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all hostages through an agreement for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the State Department says.
“Secretary Blinken welcomed Israel’s recent announcements of urgent steps to facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza and to improve humanitarian deconfliction and coordination, reiterating that incidents such as the strike on World Central Kitchen workers must never reoccur,” the US readout says. “The secretary emphasized that the United States expects Israel to quickly implement its commitments on humanitarian assistance and deconfliction and that those commitments must be sustained over time.”
There is no immediate statement from Gallant’s office on the call.
Biden envoy: ‘International workers have never seen sanitation situations as in Rafah’
The southern Gaza city of Rafah where roughly 1.4 million Palestinians are currently sheltering “is a miserable place to be from any health related, shelter related standpoint,” the Biden administration’s Gaza humanitarian envoy says.
“The ability to provide basic sanitation is non-existent. International workers have never seen sanitation situations as in Rafah,” David Satterfield says.
“The ability to do more than survival-level feeding — simply averting starvation… is extraordinarily limited. Just because we are averting famine by the collective aid efforts moving in doesn’t mean we’re preventing other problems malnutrition… and mortality among infants and young children,” he adds.
As the effective controlling power in Gaza, the US envoy says Israel has an obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure that civilians in the Strip are cared for.
“The horrific dehumanization of Israelis that took place on October 7 and the ongoing dehumanization of the Israeli hostages every day they’re held cannot be matched by the dehumanization of innocent Palestinian civilians,” Satterfield says.
The US envoy is pressed on Hamas’s historic diversion of aid money for military use and asked whether Gaza will always be reliant on outside aid.
Satterfield suggests the policies that Israel has taken in Gaza have led to the current reality.
“When [then-prime minister] Arik Sharon took his decision on unilateral withdrawal, our council at the time was you’re not going to have a happy result unless you do the opposite of what you’re proposing,” claims the envoy, who was then an official at the State Department, which at the time of the 2005 pullout publicly hailed the move.
“What he proposed was a siege and isolation of Gaza. We said that [what] you need to do is open Gaza to the maximum extent possible to tie it into international, regional and Israeli economic society — provide an alternative vision, provide something other than what comes with desperation,” he says, appearing to reference arguments made at the time in favor of handing over Gaza as part of a bilateral agreement with the Palestinian Authority, the more moderate foil to Hamas. Proponents of this strategy argue this would’ve empowered the PA, rather than Hamas, which ended up being seen as the deliverer of the Israeli withdrawal and ejected the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in a bloody coup two years later.
US envoy says maritime corridor will bring in 100 more trucks daily, admits Hamas has stolen aid
In addition to an insufficient number of trucks, there has also been a decrease in the number of aid organizations willing to distribute aid throughout Gaza following last week’s deadly IDF strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy. US Envoy David Satterfield says the WCK and the United Arab Emirates are conditioning their return to Gaza on Israel showing “in a concrete, demonstrable fashion that lessons have been learned, not just from the WCK tragedy, but from the period of time before that” when the US alleges roughly 200 aid workers were killed amid its repeated calls for Israel to improve its deconfliction mechanisms.
Israel established a new deconfliction hub between the IDF and aid groups days after the WCK strike, but international organizations are ostensibly looking for improvements to be demonstrated over a long period of time in addition to better assurances from Israel that aid workers will be protected.
The US is also working to have a maritime corridor up and running in the coming weeks, which will be able to bring in at least 100 trucks a day, Satterfield says. We’re going to get well over 500 trucks a day of commercial and humanitarian assistance. But we’ll still have to be able to distribute it efficiently.”
Asked whether Hamas has been siphoning off the aid coming into Gaza, Satterfield says the vast majority of assistance being distributed by the UN has reached civilians. He acknowledges that some of the aid may have reached Hamas. However, “Gaza’s population of 2.2 million are not… starving today because the bulk of the assistance delivered has gone to them, not to Hamas; and that’s the fundamental fact.”
Satterfield goes on to hail the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories for the work that the quasi-military body has done in facilitating aid into Gaza. “We could not do what we have been able to and could not have achieved the progress that we’ve seen without the engagement of COGAT… They took this on because they had to, and they have done an exceptional job under extremely challenging and difficult circumstances.”
The praise indicates that Washington’s frustration with Israel regarding aid is directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s political leadership.
US envoy says increased aid flow to Gaza ‘doesn’t make up for’ past 5 months
The Biden administration’s Gaza humanitarian envoy David Satterfield clarifies that the aid increase over the past several days “doesn’t make up for five months of something very, very different.”
“The five months that preceded did not show an adequate ability by Israel to facilitate and implement the operational steps necessary to get aid in,” Satterfield contends.
The number of trucks entering each day barely crossed 100 through January, after which shipments effectively stopped completely due to protests by far-right activists at Israeli inspection points near the Gaza border, the US envoy said. In February, the IDF began conducting airstrikes against the Hamas-linked police, leading the force to stop protecting aid convoys, which Satterfield says “shut down assistance moves and spurred intensely violent criminal behavior.”
“We’ve come back from that, but… it’s got to continue,” Satterfield says.
Iran news agency deletes report on shuttered airspace over Tehran, claims not to have published it
Iran’s Mehr news agency removes a report from its official channel on X that had said Iran was closing its airspace over the capital Tehran and denies in a new post that it had published any such news.
In the original report posted on X, the semi-official news agency cited the Iranian defense minister as saying that all air traffic had been suspended over Tehran “due to military drills.”
US envoy: Not enough trucks in Gaza to distribute recent influx of aid
The biggest obstacle to delivering humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza following a major influx over the past several days is the lack of trucks available in the Strip in order to deliver the assistance, the Biden administration’s Gaza humanitarian envoy reveals.
US Ambassador David Satterfield says the UN and international agencies had enough trucks in Gaza when aid was at much lower levels throughout the first six months of the war. But with an average of roughly 400 trucks entering Gaza each day this week, more trucks will be needed in order to distribute the aid.
He says the UN and international community are responsible — in cooperation with Israel — for securing more trucks. A significant number of trucks have recently been purchased and are ready to enter Gaza along with others that are in the final stages of being bought, Satterfield says, adding that the US is also urging countries to donate additional trucks in order to meet the demand.
The US humanitarian envoy for Gaza notes the major increase in aid trucks entering Gaza since the weekend, but says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed to US President Joe Biden last week to ensure that 100 trucks of aid would reach the northern Strip each day. Israel is about half-way to meeting that mark, but is not there yet, Satterfield says.
Iran reportedly suspends all air traffic over Tehran due to ‘military drills’
Iran has suspended all air traffic over the capital Tehran from midnight local time due to “military drills,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quotes the defense minister as saying.
Former Cornell student pleads guilty for making threats to kill and rape Jews
WASHINGTON — A former Cornell University student has pleaded guilty to posting online threats, including of death and violence, against Jewish students on campus, the US Justice Department says.
Patrick Dai, 21, was charged late last year for making online threats against Jewish students at the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York.
As part of his guilty plea, Dai admits that on October 28 and October 29, he threatened to bomb, stab and rape Jews on the Cornell section of an online discussion forum.
The Justice Department says Dai’s threats “caused widespread panic and fear” in Cornell’s Jewish community.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for August. 12. Dai faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, restitution to victims and a maximum of three years of supervised release, according to the Justice Department. A contact for Dai cannot immediately be reached.