Members of UN Security Council call for surge in assistance to Gaza

By Daphne Psaledakis and Patricia Zengerle

(Reuters) - Members of the United Nations Security Council called on Monday for a surge in assistance to reach people in need in Israeli-basieged Gaza, warning that the situation in the Palestinian enclave was getting worse.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said there needs to be a "huge, huge rise in aid" to Gaza, where most of the population of 2.3 million people has been displaced and health officials in the coastal enclave say that more than 43,922 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's 13-month-old offensive against Hamas.

"The situation is devastating, and frankly, beyond comprehension, and it's getting worse, not better," Lammy said. "Winter's here. Famine is imminent, and 400 days into this war, it is totally unacceptable that it's harder than ever to get aid into Gaza."

The war erupted after Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that Washington was closely watching Israel's actions to improve the situation for Palestinians and engaging with the Israeli government every day.

"Israel must also urgently take additional steps to alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza," she said.

President Joe Biden's administration concluded this month that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore not violating U.S. law, even as Washington acknowledged the humanitarian situation remained dire in the Palestinian enclave.

The assessment came after the U.S. in an Oct. 13 letter gave Israel a list of steps to take within 30 days to address the deteriorating situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so might have possible consequences on U.S. military aid to Israel.

Thomas-Greenfield said Israel was working to implement 12 of the 15 steps.

"We need to see all steps fully implemented and sustained, and we need to see concrete improvement in the humanitarian situation on the ground," she said, including Israel allowing commercial trucks to move into Gaza alongside humanitarian assistance, addressing persistent lawlessness and implementing pauses in fighting in large areas of Gaza to allow assistance to reach those in need.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., said Israel had facilitated the entrance of hundreds of aid trucks a week but there had been a failure of aid agencies to collect that aid and Hamas had looted trucks. Hamas has denied the accusation.

"Not only must the U.N. step up its aid distribution obligations, but the focus must also shift to Hamas' constant hijacking of humanitarian aid to feed the machine of terror and misery," Danon said.

Two U.N. aid agencies told Reuters on Monday that nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst losses of aid during the war.

Tor Wennesland, the U.N. coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said humanitarian agencies face a challenging and dangerous operational environment in Gaza and access restrictions that hinder their work.

"The humanitarian situation in Gaza, as winter begins, is catastrophic, particularly developments in the north of Gaza with a large-scale and near-total displacement of the population and widespread destruction and clearing of land, amidst what looks like a disturbing disregard for international humanitarian law," Wennesland said.

"The current conditions are among the worst we’ve seen during the entire war and are not set to improve."

(This story has been refiled to clarify that Danon's role is the ambassador to U.N., not U.S., in paragraph 11)

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Patricia Zengerle, David Brunnstrom, Emma Farge and Nidal al-Mughrabi; editing by Rod Nickel and Mark Heinrich)