Israel on Wednesday reopened the sole crossing on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip for the first time since it was attacked by Hamas on October 7, allowing aid trucks to pass through the Erez checkpoint following US demands to do more to get aid into the Strip.

The development came as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken toured Kerem Shalom, the main crossing through which humanitarian aid has flowed from Israel into Gaza in recent months, and Ashdod Port from which much of the aid is sent to the enclave.

He said that while aid to the Palestinian enclave has been increased, more needs to be done.

The top American diplomat also paid a short, previously unannounced visit to Kibbutz Nir Oz, which was ravaged by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, with 38 residents killed and 72 kidnapped to Gaza — some of whom have since returned — out of its population of some 400.

Residents haven’t since returned to the kibbutz, which still largely lays in ruins, with many buildings torched and damaged.

Reopening the Erez crossing — which normally facilitates the passage of people, not supplies — has been one of the main pleas of international aid agencies for months, to alleviate the humanitarian situation which is believed to be most severe among the hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza’s northern sector.

The checkpoint was largely destroyed by the Hamas terror group during its October 7 onslaught on southern Israel. Nearby, inside Gaza, the army later found a massive Hamas tunnel wide enough for a car to drive through.

The military said some 30 trucks carrying food and medical supplies from Jordan entered northern Gaza via Erez on Wednesday, undergoing a “careful security inspection” before entering.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had carried out engineering work in the area for the pedestrian crossing to be used to process trucks. It said the engineering forces “constructed inspection and protection infrastructure in the area, as well as paved roads in Israeli territory and in the Strip, enabling the entry of aid to the northern part of the Strip, while strengthening the defenses of the [Gaza border] communities in the area.”

The crossing, at the terminus of a major highway, is the closest to Gaza from Israel’s Ashdod Port, where some humanitarian aid is being shipped to.

Col. Moshe Tetro, head of Israel’s Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza, said he hoped the crossing would be open every day, and help reach a target of 500 aid trucks entering Gaza daily. That would be in line with pre-war supplies entering the enclave and far more than it has received during the last seven months.

“This is only one step of the measures that we took in the last few weeks,” he told reporters.

Earlier in the day, Jordan’s foreign ministry complained that two of its aid convoys carrying food, flour and more aid were “attacked by settlers,” without giving details of what happened, but adding that both convoys managed to continue on their journey and reach their destination.

Activists from the Tzav 9 Israeli group, which opposes humanitarian aid to Gaza as long as Hamas doesn’t free the 133 hostages it is holding there, attempted Wednesday morning to block aid trucks in various spots throughout the country.

A statement from the group said the goal was to have Blinken arrive at the Kerem Shalom crossing and not find any trucks there. The campaign didn’t appear to have succeeded as the IDF declared part of the trucks’ route and the crossing area a closed military zone.

Honenu, a right-wing legal aid agency, said four men who had “blocked aid trucks going to Gaza” as they were passing near the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim were arrested by police, which said damage was dealt to several trucks and their content.

The Jordanian government condemned the incident and said it held Israeli authorities fully responsible for ensuring the protection of aid convoys and international organizations.

At Kerem Shalom, Blinken toured the crossing area and observed the inspection procedures alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other defense officials, who briefed the US diplomat and his team on the IDF’s humanitarian efforts in Gaza. They also told him of actions taken to prevent mistaken attacks on aid workers, following the incident in which seven members of the World Central Kitchen group were killed.

The Kerem Shalom crossing was closed after October 7, when Israel imposed a strict blockade on Gaza, but reopened to limited traffic in December, making it the main entry point for aid coming from Israel.

Israeli officials can inspect 55 trucks every hour at Kerem Shalom and work from morning to sunset, said Shimon Freedman, international media spokesperson for COGAT, a Defense Ministry body that acts as a liaison to the Palestinians.

Israel has sought to demonstrate it is not blocking aid to Gaza, especially since US President Joe Biden issued a stark warning to Netanyahu, saying Washington’s policy could shift if Israel fails to take steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.

Tank fire echoed from Gaza as Blinken got his first up-close view of the Strip six months into the war. The compound at Kerem Shalom, bordered by thick concrete walls, is where aid trucks bound for Gaza are held for inspection, a process that aid groups have complained has been a major bottleneck. Israel has said the holdup is later in the process, in the UN’s distribution mechanism.

Later in the day, Blinken toured Ashdod Port, through which international aid has been arriving by sea and handled before departing to Gaza, inspecting the procedure.

Accompanied by Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, Blinken said that progress on improving humanitarian access to Gaza is real but, given the immense need in the Palestinian enclave, it needs to be accelerated.

Blinken said one of the remaining challenges was to make sure delivered aid gets distributed inside the Strip, and that deconfliction with humanitarian groups must happen on a “unit level.”

He also reiterated that the US “cannot and will not support a major military operation in Rafah absent an effective plan to make sure that civilians are not harmed, and we’ve not seen such a plan.”

“At the same time, there are other ways — and in our judgment, better ways — of dealing with the real ongoing challenge of Hamas that does not require a major military operation” in Rafah, Blinken said.

The US has urged Israel not to launch its planned offensive on Rafah, where Hamas leadership and many of the hostages are believed to be held, but also where some 1.5 million civilians have been sheltering as the war has devastated the rest of the Strip.

Netanyahu said Tuesday that he remained intent on sending troops into Rafah, whether a deal is reached or not.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which some 1,200 were murdered in Israel, mostly civilians, and 253 were kidnapped into Gaza amid rampant sexual violence and acts of horrific brutality.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says that more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent war in the Strip, but the number cannot be independently verified and is believed to include both Hamas fighters and civilians, some of whom were killed as a consequence of the terror group’s own rocket misfires.

The Israel Defense Forces says it has killed over 13,000 terrorists in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 who were killed inside Israel on and immediately following October 7. The army also says 263 soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the ground operation.