Three U.S. military aircraft carrying aid for Palestinian civilians in Gaza will land in Sinai, Egypt, senior Biden administration officials announced.
The aid flown in will include "medical items, food aid, [and] winter items," a senior U.S. official told reporters in a call on Monday night ahead of Tuesday's announcement. The official said there would be three such flights and noted that the United Nations will then distribute the items to civilians in Gaza.
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"We understand that what is getting in is nowhere near enough for normal life in Gaza, and we will continue to push for additional steps, including the restoration of the flow of commercial goods and additional basic services," the official added.
There could be further planeloads in the coming days as the U.S. and others surge humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip during the stoppage of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Over the course of the four-day ceasefire, which parties agreed to extend on Monday by two days, 800 trucks of humanitarian aid were able to enter southern Gaza, and that number will continue to increase.
"What you need is to get commercial goods in, and we have been discussing for some weeks now with the government of Israel how we move to phase two," another official said. "Phase one is the sustained delivery of basic subsistence humanitarian goods through U.N. and other channels. We're at that point now. Next point is going to commercial."
U.S. officials have reiterated their support for Israel to carry out its military campaign once the truce ultimately ends, though they have publicly and privately urged Israel to carry out its assault in a more precise manner to avoid civilian casualties. The first official said the administration has been telling its Israeli counterparts to be “more cautious, more careful, more deliberate, and more precise in their targeting” and added, “We have had some effect on their thinking and their execution.”
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Israel's ground campaign in Gaza, put on hold during the ceasefire, has primarily targeted northern Gaza, which Israeli officials have said is where Hamas is located. Israel demanded more than a million Palestinians in northern Gaza evacuate south, but there are now beliefs that the next steps in the Israeli military's ground operation will take place in the south, though the U.S. has expressed concerns about what that could look like.
“We don't support them moving in the south unless or until they can demonstrate a plan that accounts for the additional civilian life that is now in South Gaza and how they're going to try to protect that,” the first U.S. official said.