Two days after President Biden said he had secured Israel’s agreement to allow food, water and medicine into the besieged Gaza Strip, and a day after aid groups were told their trucks would cross the border on Friday, nothing budged, as the powers involved continued to haggle over the details, while conditions within Gaza grew more dire.
Speaking on Friday at the frontier between Egypt and Gaza, the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, confirmed reports that Israel and Egypt had agreed a day earlier to make aid deliveries possible “with some conditions and some restrictions,” which were still being hammered out. For more than a week, there have been reports of a possible breakthrough, yet the trucks haven’t moved.
Most recently, Israel was objecting to several aspects of plans put forward by aid groups and the United Nations, according to several U.N. and European officials and diplomats familiar with talks that also involve Egypt and the United States.
Adding to the sense of desperation in Gaza, Israel is preparing for an expected ground invasion to crush Hamas, the group that controls the territory, which would make the humanitarian needs greater — and make them harder to meet. Amid a war between Israel and Hamas that has killed thousands, more than 2 million people are trapped in the territory, many of them displaced from their homes, with rapidly dwindling vital supplies.
“Behind these walls, we have 2 million people that is suffering enormously, that has no water, no food, no medicine, no fuel, that is under fire, that needs everything to survive. On this side, we have seen so many trucks loaded with water, with fuel, with medicines, with food,” Mr. Guterres said, gesturing behind him.
The trucks, he added, are “the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza.”
