(Kerem Shalom) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kerem Shalom on Wednesday, a crossing point for humanitarian aid from Israel to the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory ravaged by the war between the Israeli army and the Islamist movement Hamas.
Mr. Blinken was able to see a dozen trucks waiting to enter the Gaza Strip, as well as several Israeli tanks parked nearby, as Israel hammers out its intention to carry out a ground assault against Rafah, a town a few kilometers from Kerem Shalom, home to around 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority displaced by the war.
The head of American diplomacy was accompanied by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and did not speak to the press. But his aides said he had raised concerns about the pace of aid flow earlier in the day during a meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There is “real and important progress, but there is still much to do,” Anthony Blinken had already declared Tuesday in Jordan, while the UN warned of an imminent famine in the Gaza Strip.
A stone’s throw from the other side of the entrance gate to the Gaza Strip, bristling with barbed wire, Mr. Blinken passed around ten aid trucks being inspected by the Israeli army before to be able to enter the Palestinian territory, besieged and bombed by Israel.
Two trucks with Egyptian license plates were loaded with bags of onions, others with bags of rice, pallets of canned beans, peas and oil.
Among the measures Israel can implement to speed up the passage of aid, Mr. Blinken said on Wednesday: establish a list of goods that will not be subject to arbitrary refusal and issue authorizations to more than drivers to enter Gaza.
Israeli officials have sought to show Mr. Blinken the progress they have made.
A spokesperson for Cogat, an organization under the Israeli Ministry of Defense responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, Shimon Freedman, told the Secretary of State that 98.5% of shipments entered without Israeli objection and that the objective was to allow the entry of 500 trucks per day.
The October 7 attack carried out from Gaza by Hamas commandos in southern Israel infiltrated from Gaza resulted in the death of 1,170 people, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. The military operation carried out in retaliation by Israel in the Gaza Strip left 34,568 dead, mainly civilians, according to Hamas.