The United States in collaboration with the Cyprus, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates UAE, Qatar, the European Union, and the United Nations have set to coordinate maritime corridor to aid Gaza.
Secretary of States, Antony Blinken who disclosed this in a Press Briefing on Wednesday said the establishment of this corridor will enable the distribution of up to 2 million meals every single day as well as medicine, water, and other critical humanitarian supplies.
The Secretary while giving the highlight of the virtual meeting with other counterparts from these countries said they are of course working with Israel on this, adding that Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada are also supporting this effort.
According to him, “Now, this is something that’s going to take time to actually put in place, although we’re working on it as expeditiously as possible. And I want to emphasize: It is a complement to, not a substitute for other ways of getting humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
“And, in particular, overland routes remain the most critical way to get assistance in and then to people who need it. But this will help close the gap, and it’s part of our all-of-the- above strategy to make sure that we’re doing everything possible by every means possible to surge support to those who need it, by land, by sea, by air”, he said.
He revealed that President Joe Biden directed the United States military to build a temporary pier in Gaza to enable help surge humanitarian assistance to those who so desperately need it, added that his country has been leading efforts from beginning to try to ensure that assistance gets to those who need it.
“We’ve had significant ups and downs, periods of interruption, disruption. And having said that, we’re also seeing right now humanitarian assistance through Rafah and through Kerem Shalom getting back to levels that we’d gotten it to some weeks ago – about 200 trucks a day.
“Yesterday, for the first time, the World Food Program was able to resume aid delivery to Gaza. Morocco made its first humanitarian assistance delivery through Kerem Shalom. This week the first shipments to north Gaza through a new crossing at the 96th gate began.
“We have flour that flowed from Ashdod Port. We’re working to make sure that inspections are accelerated and road repairs move forward, so that we can also increase the flow that’s going from Jordan into Gaza. That’s a critical route for supplies”, he said.
Blinken emphasized that Israel still needs to open as many access points as possible and keep them open to make sure that things are flowing in a sustainable way: increase the scanning capacity, the inspection capacity, particularly at Kerem Shalom, where more can be done to get more aid in quickly.
“Easing unnecessary restrictions on key products; having greater clarity and predictability on what can get in and what can’t. There’s a legitimate issue here about dual-use items, but we need to see much greater clarity, much greater consistency on what these are.
“The bottom line is we need to see – as we’ve described it, we need to see flooding the zone when it comes to humanitarian assistance for Gaza. This will have a number of, I think, important merits to it. First and foremost, it will bring comfort to people who so desperately need it.
“But beyond that, one of the challenges that we have now and that you’re seeing now is that lawlessness, insecurity all of pervades in Gaza, combined with desperation. When you put those things together, you’ve situations where aid goes in and then people immediately charge at the trucks.
“And you see looting, you see criminal gangs get in the act, and again, just ordinary civilians who, and in absence of sufficient aid may believe that their only chance to get a piece of bread is to go at the one truck that they see coming in”, the Secretary pointed out.
Speaking of ceasefire that would help in the humanitarian assistant, the US Secretary said that there’s a very strong proposal on the table right now, but the question is, will Hamas take it, does Hamas want to end the suffering that it’s provoked?
“The question is there, but I can tell you that we’re intensely engaged every single day, almost every single hour with Qatar, Egypt to see if we can get a ceasefire agreement that will get the hostages out, get more aid in, and create a pathway perhaps for a more lasting, secure solution.
“Hostages remain front and center on our minds and in our hearts. We just learned that one of the dual U.S.-Israeli citizens who we believe was taken on October 7th Itay Chen – was in fact killed on October 7th. I met with his family multiple times over the last several months.
“I spoke to them yesterday to Ruby, to Hagit. There are no good words. No one should have to go through what they’ve gone through and what the other hostage families continue to go through. It’s another reason why getting the ceasefire would be so crucial to enable us to bring the hostages home”, Blinken said.
