US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin wrote to Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant and minister for strategic affairs Ron Dermer on Sunday “to make clear our concerns about the very low levels of humanitarian assistance” Israel allows into Gaza Strip.
“This was a letter we consider to be a private diplomatic communication that we did not intend to make public from our side,” Spokesperson of the US Dept. of State Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday.
“But now that it is public, I am happy to confirm it and speak to it to some extent. I think you have to put this letter in the context of our ongoing and long lasting communications and concerns about the levels of humanitarian assistance that have made it to Palestinian civilians.
“If you go back to April, the secretary wrote at the time to Minister Gallant to make clear that we had seen the levels of humanitarian assistance plateau and then, after they plateaued, start to decline, and made clear that — at the time that t
he levels were unacceptable and that we needed to see Israel implement changes.
“They did make changes. The changes that they made caused humanitarian assistance to increase,” Miller noted.
“We got up to somewhere between 300 to 400 trucks going in on some days to Gaza. But the thing that the secretary (Blinken) also made clear at the time is that the increase couldn’t be a one-off, that it needed to be sustained.
“And what we have seen over the past few months is that the level of humanitarian assistance has not been sustained. “In fact, it has fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak. So, the secretary, along with Secretary Austin, thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today,” the spokesperson went on.
“So, I’m not going to speak to that today. Obviously, we made clear when we released our repo
rt that was mandated under National Security Memorandum 20 that there are provisions under US law that require us to make certain certifications. “And to make those certifications, we have to see that Israel is not arbitrarily denying humanitarian assistance making it into Gaza,” he added.
On a similar note, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed that content of the letter to the Israeli government was leaked to the media before official authorization.
Source: Kuwait News Agency