Israel’s military said on Monday that it had expanded a humanitarian zone it created in southern Gaza. The move came just before the expiry of a Biden administration deadline for Israel to deliver more aid to the enclave or risk a cutoff of military supplies.
In a statement, the Israeli military said that the zone would now include field hospitals; tent compounds; shelter supplies; and provisions of food, water, medicine and medical equipment, though it did not specify whether any new additions had been made to the resources already present. The military provided a map showing that nine areas had been added to the zone.
Aid agencies have said that supplies are desperately needed to offset the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, especially in the north, where Israel has stepped up military operations against the militant group Hamas.
The Israeli military’s announcement came as the 30-day deadline set on Oct. 13 by the Biden administration is set to expire. In one of the starkest American warnings since the war began, the administration said that failure to provide more aid to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents before that deadline “may have implications for U.S. policy,” including on the provision of the military assistance upon which Israel depends.
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday that the United States would this week evaluate “what kind of progress” Israel had made on allowing aid into Gaza. Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Sullivan said President Biden would then “make judgments about what we do in response.”
It remains unclear whether the expansion announced by Israel’s military would lead to any improvement in conditions inside the humanitarian zone, also known as Al-Mawasi — a coastal area of southern Gaza that was sparsely populated before the war but is now overcrowded with displaced families. The area, designated as safe for civilians by Israel’s military earlier this year, has frequently been damaged by Israeli strikes and lacks sufficient medical services. Israel’s military has said that its strikes target Hamas militants and that it takes steps to avoid civilian casualties.
Israel has since issued evacuation orders that affected parts of the humanitarian zone, effectively shrinking the already overcrowded area by more than a fifth.
Israel has repeatedly ordered Palestinians in other areas of Gaza to evacuate to the humanitarian zone, despite protests from aid groups that the area lacks adequate shelter, water, food, sanitation or health care.
The Biden administration’s deadline is set to expire just days after a United Nations-backed panel warned that famine was imminent in the northern Gaza Strip and that action was needed “within days, not weeks” to alleviate the suffering in the enclave.
Here’s what else is happening:
Evacuation orders: In southern Lebanon, where Israel is fighting the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders on Monday for more than 20 towns and villages.
The warnings, the first such orders in nearly a month, were issued via social media and called on civilians to evacuate their homes “immediately” and to move north above the Awali River. The river effectively demarcates southern Lebanon, which Israel invaded last month in a bid to destroy Hezbollah’s border infrastructure. The U.N. refugee agency said last month that over a quarter of Lebanese territory was now under an Israeli evacuation order.
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