Israel allows less than half the aid convoys into Gaza in March, UN says: Updates
Editor's Note: This page is a summary of news on the Israel-Hamas war for Tuesday, March 19. For the latest news on the conflict in the Middle East, view our live updates file on the war for Wednesday March 20.
Israel was not particularly helpful in getting humanitarian assistance into battered northern Gaza in the first half of March, facilitating only 11 of the 24 aid missions the United Nations planned, the agency said Tuesday.
The other 13 aid convoys were either denied by Israel or postponed, U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters, adding that “truck convoys are frequently turned back, even after long waits at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint” in the central part of the enclave. Some aid trucks have also been looted by desperately hungry people, he said.
A new report says 70% of the 300,000 Palestinians remaining in northern Gaza are in danger of "catastrophic hunger,'' and nearly half the territory's 2.3 million people face starvation.
Haq said satisfying Gaza's basic food needs would require at least 300 daily trucks, well below the 500 that regularly went in before the war. The number of aid trucks has fluctuated considerably, but the February average was just 95, though it has increased to 160 this month.
That's still about half the number needed, and Haq said the U.N. humanitarian office keeps asking the Israeli military “to guarantee safe, sustained and unhindered access across Gaza – and to open up all possible entry points into Gaza.”
Gaza facing 'catastrophic hunger':US also says Israel killed Hamas' No. 3
Developments:
∎ Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, speaking to Italian lawmakers ahead of an EU Council meeting later this week, joined the chorus of international leaders voicing opposition to Israel's proposed ground invasion of Rafah. Meloni said such an offensive "could have yet more catastrophic consequences on the civilians massed in that area."
∎ The entire population of Gaza is experiencing “severe levels of acute food insecurity,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, expanding on starvation warnings issued by the U.N. a day earlier. Blinken is in the Philippines ahead of his latest in a series of trips to the Middle East.
∎ The Israeli military said Tuesday that troops have killed more than 50 Hamas militants and arrested 180 more during an ongoing raid at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Israeli forces launched the raid Monday on Gaza’s largest hospital compound, where Palestinian officials say tens of thousands of people have been sheltering. Hamas accused the Israelis of targeting the compound with "indifference to the patients, medical crews and displaced" Palestinians living there.
∎ U.S. Central Command said it destroyed seven anti-ship missiles, three drones and three weapons storage containers belonging to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who said Tuesday they have continued their attacks on commercial vessels, most recently targeting the carrier Mado in both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Groups, leaders call out Donald Trump:'Defamatory and antisemitic' comments about Jewish voters blasted
UN official says Israel may be using starvation as a weapon of war
For the second day in a row a high-level international official is warning Israel against using hunger as a weapon of war as virtually all of Gaza’s population grapples with crisis levels of food insecurity and 1.1 million face starvation.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Tuesday that immediate efforts must be made to prevent the projected imminent famine in Gaza, starting with Israel allowing more humanitarian aid in.
“The extent of Israel’s continued restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime,” Türk said, calling on the international community to intervene.
On Monday, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also asked Israel to make it easier for aid to enter Gaza, and said, “Hunger can’t be used as a weapon of war. … We urge Israel to allow free, unimpeded, safe humanitarian access.”
Israeli officials have pushed back, saying Hamas is stealing the food for its fighters, and that the U.N. and other aid organizations are to blame for failing to distribute the supplies brought in.
US may not restore UNRWA funding for another year, report says
The U.S. would cut off money for UNRWA, the embattled U.N. agency for Palestinian aid, until March 2025 as part of a deal between Congress and the White House to fund government programs including the military, Reuters reported Tuesday.
The Biden administration is already withholding financial backing for UNRWA amid an investigation into Israeli charges that at least 12 of the agency's 13,000 workers participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks. More than 10 other countries and entities also paused their funding, but the U.S. decision has had the biggest impact because it donates more than any other nation, $300-400 million a year.
UNRWA officials, who fired the 12 employees, have said they won't be able to continue providing critical aid and services in war-ravaged Gaza without the funding, and a handful of countries have vowed to restore it. The U.S. has explored alternative ways of supplying assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, Reuters reported.
On Tuesday, UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said Israel barred him from going into Gaza as part of a delegation the previous day, and he challenged the explanation that his entry application contained mistakes.
Only way to destroy Hamas is invading Rafah, Netanyahu says
Israel will listen to Biden administration alternatives to a ground invasion of Rafah "out of respect for the president," but there is no other way to ensure the complete destruction of Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Netanyahu, in a call Monday with President Joe Biden, agreed to send a "senior interagency team" of military, intelligence and humanitarian officials to Washington to discuss Israel's plans for Rafah. The White House said Tuesday that meeting will probably take place early next week.
Netanyahu's determination to storm the southern Gaza city, packed with more than 1 million refugees who fled other areas of Gaza, has drawn fierce opposition from regional and global leaders.
“I made it as clear as possible to the president that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there is no way to do this without a ground incursion,” Netanyahu told a Knesset committee Tuesday in a translation provided by Israeli News.
Sullivan, in a briefing Monday, said Biden stressed that Palestinians taking refuge in Rafah "have nowhere else to go (because) Gaza’s other major cities have largely been destroyed." Invading the city, a primary entry point for humanitarian assistance into Gaza from Egypt, would further complicate efforts to provide food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians, Sullivan said. An invasion also could damage already strained Israeli-Egyptian relations, he added.
"A major ground operation there would be a mistake. It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza, and further isolate Israel internationally," Sullivan said. "Most importantly, the key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means."
Qatar official 'optimistic' as cease-fire talks continue
Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari expressed cautious optimism that talks underway in Doha would lead to a cease-fire and release of some or all hostages. Mossad chief David Barnea, lead negotiator for Israel, returned home Tuesday, but an Israeli technical negotiating team remained in Doha, Ansari said in a briefing. He said a proposal could be sent to Hamas within days.
A previous proposal believed to provide a six-week truce in return for release of at least 40 of the over 100 captives still held by militants was reportedly rejected by Hamas leaders. Hamas has been pressing for an end to the war and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops.
Ansari also stressed Qatar's position "is very clear" that an Israeli ground assault in Rafah would be a humanitarian catastrophe. A humanitarian aid plane from Qatari arrived Tuesday in Egypt, loaded with food and other vital supplies bound for Gaza.
"The negotiations are (ongoing) and that’s what gives us optimism right now," Ansari said. "We hope that we can continue building (a deal) in the next days."
Trump: A Jewish person who votes for Democrats 'hates their religion'
Former President Donald Trump again used an offensive stereotype about Jewish Americans, prompting immediate backlash from Jewish groups and leaders. "Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”
Trump singled out Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., during the interview posted Monday. Schumer is the nation's highest-ranking Jewish elected official and a longtime supporter of Israel. The New York lawmaker in a Monday post on X, formerly Twitter, accused the ex-president of again using "highly partisan and hateful rants."
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement to USA TODAY that "accusing Jews of hating their religion because they might vote for a particular party is defamatory and patently false. Serious leaders who care about the historic U.S.-Israel alliance should focus on strengthening, rather than unraveling, bipartisan support for the State of Israel." Read more here.
− David Jackson and Marina Pitofsky
Second aid ship from Cyprus delayed by bad weather
A second ship is loaded and ready to bring about 240 tons of food supplies to the starving residents of Gaza. Now it's a matter of waiting for the weather to cooperate.
World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef Jose Andres, said poor conditions are holding up the departure of the vessel at the Cyprus port of Larnaca. The ship, named Jennifer, will transport beans, carrots, canned tuna, chickpeas, dates, flour and oil among other items to help feed a population the U.N. says is facing "catastrophic hunger.''
The first such attempt at using a sea route to carry humanitarian aid into Gaza was successful last week when a ship from the Spanish aid group Open Arms docked in a makeshift jetty assembled by WCK off the Gaza coast with 200 tons of food. The ship left Cyprus on Tuesday and arrived in the Palestinians territory Friday. WCK said those provisions were delivered to devastated north Gaza with a U.N. World Food Program convoy Tuesday.
Finding a maritime route to bring in supplies has become necessary because of restrictions Israel has placed on taking them in by land, which is much more efficient.
Antisemitism protest:Professor slept in his office. He's not the only one.
Is language barrier damaging Israel's image?
Netanyahu reportedly told a Knesset committee that Israel’s international image suffers because so few officials speak English well. Channel 12, reporting from a closed-door meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Netanyahu was asked whether Israel's viewpoint on the war was suffering because of a lack of promotional funding. Netanyahu reportedly responded that money wasn't the only problem, but that the government needs to find spokespeople sufficiently fluent in English, the first or second language across much of the world.
The buzz drew a response Tuesday from Netanyahu’s office to the Times of Israel, saying the prime minister “deeply values the work of his team and of the Public Diplomacy Directorate that operates under him, and he said this to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.”
Professors protest antisemitism, Islamophobia with sleep-ins
A growing number of college professors in California will sleep in their offices overnight this week to protest their school administrations' response to a growing trend of antisemitism on their campuses fueled by the war in Gaza. They’re joining Ron Hassner, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been staying in his office for nearly two weeks in response to what he sees as inaction on the part of school administrators.
He says they've failed to act on a list of demands he presented after recent incidents on campus. Hassner wants staff to receive training on curbing antisemitism and Islamophobia. He also requested that if invited speakers are disrupted by protesters and cannot finish their presentations, they be asked back to campus to speak again.
“Everybody in the Berkeley leadership is deeply embarrassed by professors and students who speak out of line and behave in unprofessional ways,” he told USA TODAY. Read more here.
− Zachary Schermele and Leora Arnowitz
Contributing: The Associated Press