By Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration has concluded that Israel is not currently blocking aid to Gaza and is therefore not violating U.S. law, the State Department said on Tuesday, even as Washington acknowledged that the humanitarian situation remained dire in the enclave Palestinian.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in an October 13 letter, provided their Israeli counterparts with a list of specific steps Israel must take within 30 days to address the worsening situation in Gaza. Failure to do so could have possible consequences for US military aid to Israel, they said in the letter.

On Tuesday, as the deadline in the letter expired, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel repeatedly declined to say whether the criteria had been met. But he told reporters that Israel had taken steps to respond to the demands and that Washington would continue to assess the situation.

“We’ve seen some progress made. We’d like to see more changes. We think if it wasn’t for US intervention, these changes may never have happened,” Patel said, adding that Washington would continue to have Israel’s compliance with US law assessed.

Eight international aid groups, including Oxfam and Save the Children, said in a report that Israel had not met the demands by Tuesday’s deadline.

In a later statement on Tuesday, the Palestinian militant movement Hamas that rules Gaza criticized the Biden administration’s claim that Israel had taken steps to improve the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

The assessment was “an affirmation of President Biden’s full partnership in the brutal genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas said.

The group again accused Washington of providing political and military cover to Israel and shielding it from accountability.

Biden, whose term ends soon, has offered strong support to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then. Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of destroyed buildings and piles of rubble, where more than 2 million Gazans are seeking shelter as best they can.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a Nov. 4 briefing that despite Israel’s steps to increase access to aid, the results on the ground in Gaza were not good enough.

Blinken, in a meeting with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Monday, also stressed the need for Israel’s measures to lead to improvements on the ground.

Patel declined to say why Washington chose to base its assessment on Israel’s measures to address the problems, rather than results on the ground, which US officials have repeatedly said would be their measuring stick.

ISRAEL’S STEPS

On Tuesday, Patel said Israel had taken some steps, including reopening the Erez crossing, waiving some customs requirements and opening additional delivery routes into Gaza.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that handles Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israeli humanitarian efforts over the past six months, “highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches.”

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, welcomed the State Department’s statement. “We are working very closely with our allies in Washington,” he told reporters. “I did a lot. We worked very hard to support the humanitarian needs in Gaza.”

“It’s a challenge… because on the other side you have Hamas. So even if we allow the trucks to pass the checkpoints, Hamas will hijack the trucks and sometimes even when we do 100%, we can’t guarantee the results” , he added. .

The US deadline expired just days after global food security experts said there was a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent” in parts of northern Gaza as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area.

For more than a month, Israeli forces have pushed deeper into northern Gaza, surrounding hospitals and shelters and displacing new waves of people in an operation they say is designed to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Katharine Jackson and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington, additional reporting by Jaidaa Taha; Editing by David Gregorio, Deepa Babington and Rosalba O’Brien)