A deal to allow desperately-needed humanitarian aid to enter war-torn Gaza, where 1 million people have fled their homes amid indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes, was unveiled by U.S. President Joe Biden late Wednesday.
After face-to-face talks in Israel and intense telephone diplomacy with Egypt, Biden said a limited number of trucks would be allowed to cross the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza as of Friday.
It would be the first international relief to enter Gaza since Oct. 7, when Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched a surprise incursion of Israel.
In response, Israel has besieged the coastal enclave, launching wave after wave of airstrikes, enforcing a blockade and deploying tens of thousands of troops to the border in preparation for an expected ground assault.
The United Nations and humanitarian groups have begged for the military stranglehold on Gaza to be eased, to allow supplies of water, food, fuel and medicines to enter.
Top U.N. humanitarian official Martin Griffiths said Wednesday the situation in Gaza was dire, with hospitals overwhelmed, more than 3,000 Gazans killed and 12,500 injured.
"The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction" he said "cannot be exaggerated."
Despite the devastation, more than 100 trucks have been queued for days on the Egyptian side of the border waiting to enter Gaza.
Israel has already hit the border crossing with multiple airstrikes since Oct. 7.
Egypt controls the border and fears throwing open the gates would bring tens of thousands of refugees to its territory.
After what he described "blunt" negotiations and a telephone call with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Biden indicated that about 20 trucks would enter Gaza to start with, with more to come if all sides agree.
"We want to get as many of the trucks out as possible," Biden said aboard Air Force One.
"If Hamas confiscates it or doesn't let it get through ... then it's going to end, because we're not going to be sending any humanitarian aid to Hamas," Biden said.
Israeli officials said the deliveries would be limited to "food, water and medicine," and that the effort was conditional on aid not being used by Hamas.
The U.N.'s Griffiths estimated that about 100 trucks per day were needed to meet the needs in Gaza.
On Thursday, thousands of tons of aid bound for Gaza remained on the Egyptian side of the border.
Sisi – whose spokesperson said the pair had agreed on "the sustainable delivery of aid" – has maintained that Egypt "did not close" the border, but that four rounds of Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing have forced it shut.
An eyewitness told AFP that "150 trucks have been waiting at Rafah" – the only passage in and out of Gaza not controlled by Israel – in addition to those in the nearby Egyptian city of el Arish, where planes full of relief supplies have been arriving.
Humanitarian workers at the border again warned that the aid must be allowed in as soon as possible, as perishable supplies had already begun to spoil.
Humanitarian groups have warned that basic supplies have run dangerously low in the impoverished territory of 2.4 million.
